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For a week, it was nothing but planes, trains and automobiles for a group of middle school-aged girls.
It's a week long academy to get girls introduced into transportation-related careers using math and science.
It's really fun and I definitively want to do it next year. I have learned a lot.
The Transportation Academy, run by the Center for Transportation Research,
teaches girls about transportation safety and careers in fun ways using items such as remote control cars and a driving simulator.
Behind each activity is a lesson.
We had them drive the course first just to get used to the simulator, then we had them do it again except while texting.
Then we plotted the data to see how well they drove compared to the first time
We are just trying to enforce the idea that texting while driving is not a good thing and it is a safety issue
It was much harder. I kept going off the road and it was just a big distraction
I kept running into trees and stuff and I went off the road.
And I think if there were other drivers on the road I would have been a really big hazard to them.
Girls also learned the lesson of wearing a seatbelt by meeting "The Convincer."
They said it was to convince you to wear a seatbelt. So you can feel the impact and that was just at 5 mph and it hurt really bad when you lifted up.
So that was to make you think if you were going way faster how it would feel if you got in a car wreck.
All weeklong, girls traveled to transportation hubs such as the airport and TDOT where women in the field gave them a behind the scenes look.
We've pulled females that are in the profession now to work with the girls and I think that shows them that, yes, it is possible to come into this field.
I had no idea there were so many women. They are doing a great job. This is normally a man's job.
The girls came to the academy not knowing much about the interesting jobs in the world of transportation and the driving force women have in it,
but now they know, and realize the world is open to them too.
This has been a lot of fun. I have learned a lot. I am definitely going to consider some of the jobs they have showed me.