Jenni Buckley, Ph.D., co-founder of the Perry Initiative and assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Delaware (UD) has been awarded the 2016 Arthur Trabant Award for Women’s Equity. Buckley and orthopedic surgeon Lisa Lattanza co-founded the Perry Initiative which is a program aimed at inspiring young women to be leaders in engineering and orthopedic surgery. In 2009 the two offered the first Perry Outreach Program for high school students in San Francisco.
“We started Perry with just 15 girls, and I quickly realized what an impact you can have if you share what you do with people and show them how passionate you are about it, ” Buckley remembers. Today, the nonprofit founded by the two women runs approximately 30 day-long outreach programs nationwide. The young participants perform mock orthopedic surgeries and conduct biomechanical engineering experiments.
In 2014, Buckley and Amy Trauth-Nare, associate director at UD’s Professional Development Center for Educators, co-advised an interdisciplinary team of senior design students, in the development of Orthopaedics in Action curriculum kits. The kits, which are now sold nationally through Sawbones, a leading manufacturer of anatomical models, teach science, mathematics, and engineering concepts through medical experiments.
Buckley brings a systems approach to her work with youth. “If I visit a couple of middle school classrooms a year, I can affect maybe 60 girls, ” Buckley said. “But through programs like The Perry Initiative, we can reach thousands. Perry has expanded beyond my wildest dreams, and its success made me realize that I wanted to be an educator full time.”
“As engineering educators, we have to be careful not to throw away our engineering hats—we have to engineer our impact, ” she adds. “It’s easy to focus on one student success story and then move on to the next one, but we have to think more broadly if we want to increase the number of women enrolling in engineering programs.”
