Edison Community College...
“We Are IT!” Program Returns To Edison
Annual event promotes tech fields to girls across Ohio
Angela Siefer, founder of ShinyDoor  

November 9, 2011 

Edison Community College will be hosting more than 200 young women and their teachers from Miami, Darke and Shelby Counties who will be participating in the annual “We Are IT!” day, a program designed to help boost girls’ interest in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields. 

The event will be held Friday, Nov. 18, with registration beginning at 8:30 a.m. at Edison’s Piqua campus. 

Girls participating in the event will have the opportunity to get hands-on experience working with robotics, examining and calculating crime scene data and discovering the secrets of movie special effects. Nearly 15 different breakout sessions will be held with participants attending three different ones throughout the day. There is also a networking lunch and the day ends with a laptop awarded to the winner of an essay contest. 

This year, three breakout sessions aimed at helping teachers have been added, covering topics such as higher education enrollment opportunities and the post-secondary enrollment option program (PSEOP), and identifying ways that technology can help students cheat. 

The event will kick off with a breakfast and welcome address from keynote speaker Angela Siefer, the founder of ShinyDoor, which specializes in assisting small businesses, nonprofits and government agencies by providing social technology guidance and digital equality program development. Siefer was also the vice president of business development at Lumifi, executive director of Grassroots.org, and executive director of the Ohio Community Computing Network. Her nonprofit work has extended into the voluntary arena by serving on multiple boards, including the Community Technology Center Network, the Public Interest Registry, and Alliance for Community Media.  

This will be the sixth year that Edison has hosted the event, which last year had more than 3,000 statewide participants. The event is sponsored by the Ohio Department of Education, Office of Career-Technical Education in collaboration with the Ohio IT Business Advisory Network. Activities at sites throughout Ohio are supported through funds from the federal Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act.