Deborah Hirst, NIOSH engineer, on her path into engineering: transcript

Key points

• She built doll houses from household items as a child, and her mother supported her curiosity even when she broke a calculator.
• A guidance counselor pointed her to civil engineering when her school had no architecture program.
• She likes breaking things to see how they work and redesigning them, from lab work with wind tunnels and HEPA filters to construction sites with silica exposure.
• Engineers do not have to be the best at math or writing, but they must be dedicated.
• Outside work she bakes and plays with her two-year-old children.
• She advises aligning with a senior female engineer, since it is hard for women to be heard and respected.

Chapters

1. 0:00Childhood curiosity and choosing civil engineering
2. 1:00Why she loves the variety of engineering work
3. 1:51Advice on school and joining public health service
4. 2:40Baking and time with her family
5. 3:24Advice for women: find a mentor

Full transcript

0:00Hello, welcome. People that go into engineering, they love being hands-on. I would actually build my doll houses out of anything I could find around the house. But my mom, even when I would destroy my brother's calculator, she never got upset about that because she saw something in me. I talked to my guidance counselor and I told her of my interest and she said, well, we don't have an architectural program, but we have the next best thing and that's civil engineering. And she told me a little bit about it and

1:00Then I fell in love and so that's when I decided to become a civil engineer. Here. I love engineering because I can pretty much break things and see how they work and try to redesign them to become better. One day I can be in the lab with a chemo gown on and gloves and playing with a wind tunnel or a HEPA filter and then the next day I may be out on a construction site looking at silica exposure.

1:51Go to school, you don't have to be the best at math. A lot of engineers, let me tell you, are not the best at math and not the best at writing either. but we were all dedicated we knew that's that was our goal was to graduate as an engineer I talked to someone who was engineer with the United States Public Health Service who worked for EPA at the time and he kind of helped me and told me what he did and I was like well maybe this is for me and so I put in my application and the rest is history and I absolutely love it I enjoy baking I I love baking cakes and cookies and trying out new recipes.

2:40And plus, the family always likes to be the taste testers of new recipes. And I just love playing with my kids and spending time with family. Finally. They're two years old and they're a handful. And right now they're interested in Star Wars. They love Westerns, Indiana Jones. So we're watching like a lot of movies and we're playing with lightsabers and action figures. And they've even gotten into wrestling. So they wrestle a lot.

3:24It's good to align yourself with another female engineer, especially one that may be more senior that can kind of guide you along the way because I'm pretty sure she's been through similar challenges. It's hard to have your voice heard as a woman and to be respected. A lot of engineers are very introverted and we don't like the spotlight and we kind of like to help behind the scenes, but we always like to know that we're helping someone.

Source and licence

Recording: File:Science Speaks - Talking to Women in Science (Deborah, Engineer).webm by National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (2013-11-04), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

The transcript is machine speech-to-text by the TidyTools Audio & video transcriber; the summary, key points and chapters were written by Claude from that transcript. Both may contain errors: check the recording before quoting it.