Janet Weinthal, ITWomen Scholarship Recipient, Pursuing Electrical Engineering

Janet Weinthal, 2016 ITWomen scholarship recipient, is majoring in Electrical Engineering and minoring in Math at Florida Atlantic University. 

Janet says, “I was lucky enough to go FAU high school, which is a dual enrollment lab program so I got to go to nothing but three years of college classes at FAU.” At FAU she participated in a lot of extra-curricular activities, including Science Olympiad.

“ITWomen definitely means an opportunity for women to band together. Technology is definitely a male-dominated field, so women often feel isolated and, at least on a high school level, like we have to compete with each other, which just isn’t the case. So ITWomen’s a chance to rise above all that and for women in technology to support and create opportunities for one another.”

In the 9th grade Janet joined her school’s rookie team in the Sea Perch ROV Competition, which went all the way to National that first year. Two years later, Janet went on to serve as president of three middle and three high school teams.

“I was lucky to take two of my middle school teams with us, for the third time, to nationals.  My high school team won second place in the nation and first place for presentation. I was so proud of my middle school kids, they won second and third place in presentation.”

Sea Perch ROV is an innovative underwater robotics program that provides students an opportunity to learn about STEM while building a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV). Students learn engineering concepts, problem solving, teamwork, and technical applications.

She also served on FAU High School’s FEM-STEM (Female Empowerment and Mentoring in STEM) program while at FAU High School.  The FEM-STEM program is open to all female students interested in learning about the opportunities available in all areas of STEM including: engineering, medicine, and micro-biology. FEM-STEM is sponsored by female graduate students, and participants are able to listen to female professionals share their experiences in their respective fields.

Janet was also part of her high school’s team to build, design, develop and run a drone programing competition for local, middle and high school students. As part of the program, she also taught middle school students how to program in Javascript, using many drones. She then conducted research on the efficacy of that program.

She says she definitely found her passion for science and engineering in the ninth grade when she started taking classes in engineering and joining extra-curricular school activities.

“ITWomen definitely means an opportunity for women to band together. Technology is definitely a male-dominated field, so women often feel isolated and, at least on a high school level, like we have to compete with each other, which just isn’t the case. So ITWomen’s a chance to rise above all that and for women in technology to support and create opportunities for one other.”

For now, she’s “pretty sure” she wants to be a professor because she loves teaching and research, and thinks she would like to research alternative energy.

Her grandmother has been an inspiration. She is such a selfless and tough women. She crusded to get CPR in my uncle’s school back in the 1950s. She learned how to fly a plane back when women just didn’t do that. She’s always reading always studying.