Workshops to begin in October
Armed with a computer lab, workshops and members of the academic community, the UA is building a new Virtual Development Center aimed at bringing more women into engineering.
"One of our major concerns is the attrition rate among freshmen women in engineering," said Ray Umashankar, director of the Virtual Development Center. "We will recruit women engineering students to participate in the VDC projects and award them scholarships."
The workshops will begin in October, even though the center is not scheduled to open until the start of next semester. The first of these will bring together people from the university, industry and the community to learn about technology over the Web, Umashankar said.
For its first project, the center will use software developed by University of Arizona Electrical and Computer Engineering professor, Ralph Martinez. This program connects urban hospitals with advanced radiology equipment to rural hospitals that lack these resources.
