On April 22, 2026, Nitsch Engineering hosted our 24th annual Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day to help show 6th – 12th grade girls why engineering is a great career. This year, our team of volunteers built a program around the theme of “A Day at the Beach” and focused on how engineers plan and design transportation infrastructure for beach-goers to access the beach, improve water quality so we can enjoy our beaches all year round, and design shorelines to be more resilient! The event was hosted at CBT’s office in Charlestown.
The day kicked off with an icebreaker activity where the students studied poster boards that provided facts about different types of transportation, resilience, and water management and quality design to help them complete a crossword puzzle using the new terms they learned.
Jennifer Johnson, PE, CFM, LEED AP, President & CEO then welcomed attendees to the event and introduced the students to the field of engineering, and Dr. Loretta Fernandez shared her story about how she decided to change her career path and go back to school to study engineering, and has grown her career as an Associate Professor and researcher at Northeastern University.
The girls then took part in three activities focusing on the theme of the day:
- For the first activity, the students were given a narrative about characters who wanted to go to the beach for the day. With the details they were given, they navigated the challenges the character faced and determined the best way they could get to the beach while trying to be sustainable and safe.
- For the second activity, the girls learned how water quality impacts a day at the beach and how we can treat stormwater to make it cleaner and healthier for people and the environment. In this interactive activity, the girls got up out of their seats to line up as different parts of a stormwater management system.
- For the third activity, the girls were tasked with redesigning a shoreline to make it more resilient by including solutions such as jetties, oyster reefs, shade structures, and dunes.
While the girls were designing their sites, adult chaperones were taken to a separate room to hear about how to support interest in STEM activities and careers from Nitsch Engineering founder, Judy Nitsch, and Senior Project Manager, Michelle Callahan, PE, LEED AP.
The day wrapped up with a panel discussion, moderated by Catie Coumounduros, EIT, Senior Project Designer, on being a woman in engineering. The panel included Emma Helfrich, PE, Water Resources Engineer in our Resilience Planning and Design department; Meher Kaur Khanna, Environmental Science & Engineering Fellow at Neponset River Watershed Association; and Kathryn Piasecki, AICP, EIT, Planner in our Resilience Planning and Design department.
Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day would not be possible without the help of so many! In addition to those already noted above, thank you to Paige Blanchard, Emily Derrig, Allison Evans, Rachel Graham, Chanel Jackson, Kelsey Kern, Virginia Kilbourn, Mengyao Li, Anna Luciano, Marley Peterson, Piera Varela, and Engel Williams.
Want to bring a student you know next year? Be sure to sign up for the invitation list here!
