Some Butler middle school students are spending their Friday learning about careers in engineering.
It’s part of XTO Energy’s “Introduce A Girl To Engineering Day.”
XTO employees are working with about 30 Butler Intermediate High School female students on two hands-on engineering activities at XTO’s Warrendale office.
As a woman in the industry, Operations Engineer for Exxon Mobil Meredith Gustafsson was thrilled to help lead the event.
“I hope it makes them excited about a technical job and a technical career some day,” she said.
Gustafsson decided to get into the engineering field, specifically chemical engineering, because of her father, who was an engineer himself.
“My Dad said that you can always go less technical later in your life, but it’s more difficult to go more technical,” she said.
The activities at XTO’s “Introduce A Girl To Engineering Day” surround STEM careers, otherwise known as science, technology, engineering and math.
“It’s hard when you’re in high school to know what different careers actually mean and what a typical day would look like in those careers,” she said.
Lauren Manion, a geologist at XTO, hopes the event stresses to students that there are lot of different careers in the oil and gas industry.
“It’s not just petroleum engineering, or business, there are a lot of different thing you can do in this industry and a lot of different jobs that XTO employs,” Manion said.
