SEMINAR Workshop discusses options for women

The six-hour seminar was designed to expose young women to careers in science and technology.
YOUNGSTOWN -- Both the fumes from Super Glue as well as blood splatter patterns go a long way toward telling authorities what took place at a crime scene.
Regardless of how diligently perpetrators try to destroy evidence of their involvement, most leave behind DNA samples, fingerprints and other evidence unique to them. Super Glue fumes can lift fingerprints from clothes and other areas, and such evidence is often more compelling to juries deciding a person's guilt or innocence than eyewitness accounts.
Those were a sample of the lessons about 30 middle and high school pupils learned as they reviewed information they had gleaned about forensic science. The pupils were among those at Youngstown State University to participate in Saturday's eighth annual Women in Science and Engineering Career Workshop.
Objective
The six-hour workshop, sponsored by the YSU Women's Studies Program, was designed to expose young women to career opportunities in science and technology. The event featured numerous panels at which female scientists answered questions about their careers. Among the panels set up to give the pupils career information were groups in forensic science, industrial engineering, physical therapy, dentistry and astronomy.
The afternoon portion had hands-on activities and lab demonstrations in the fields of biology, chemistry, engineering, physics and forensics. Dr. Tammy King, a professor of criminal justice, pointed out that since 9/11, there has been a large demand for forensic scientists to work with the Department of Homeland Security.
A degree in the field can lead to careers as fingerprint technicians, evidence technologists, detectives, toxicologists and serologists, King said.
King showed the girls how blood spatter can indicate the direction a body was moved or how a perpetrator walked through the scene. She also had on display pieces of glass showing what types of impressions are made by different caliber bullets.
Also on hand were photographs of actual crime scenes. Before the demonstrations and workshops, pupils, teachers and parents heard remarks by Dr. Lenka Fedorkova, the event's keynote speaker.
Opportunities
Fedorkova, a science and technology policy fellow with the National Institute of Health's Office of Technology Transfer, told her audience that, despite growing up in the former Czechoslovakia under Communist rule, the country had excellent educational opportunities.
"I was surrounded by science and education," with parents who were doctors and teachers, Fedorkova said. At age 15, Fedorkova and her family escaped to Geistthal, Austria, before coming to the Mahoning Valley in 1990. After struggling to learn English, Fedorkova got her doctorate degree in neuroscience in May 2003 from Kent State University.
After moving to Washington, D.C., she got a job at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which publishes Science magazine. Fedorkova said she had that job for one year. Fedorkova said she hoped her presentation would exemplify to the pupils and parents the difficulties and obstacles she had to overcome to achieve success.
"My background tells kids you can overcome hurdles and barriers and if you know what you want to do, you can do it," she said. "It inspires kids to go into math and science."