When attendees make the rounds at the STEM Symposium on April 14, Virginia Tech representatives will be on hand to answer all their questions.
Even students who don’t plan to attend the school might be surprised by what they learn. Take Simone Acha, a seasoned consultant and former co-owner and CEO of iLuMinA Solutions, who once was sure she was going to Georgia Tech, the No. 1 school in the nation for industrial engineering at the time.
“I already knew I wanted to be an industrial engineer even before I went to college because I attended the National High School Institute the summer after junior year where I found out what industrial engineers do,” she said. “Virginia Tech at that point was my backup school.”
After applying for scholarships to help defray tuition expenses, Acha won a full scholarship at the in-state school. Acha still wasn’t fully onboard, but her mom insisted she at least pay the school a visit.
“I went down to see the campus, and I fell in love,” Acha recalled. “You get down there, and you just instinctively feel like you’re at home.”
Acha is among the happy Hokie alumni who will be on hand to answer questions about the school.
The STEM Symposium will be held at the Nysmith School for the Gifted in Herndon, Virginia. There is no admission fee, but organizers request attendees register in advance.
Presented by Altamira Technologies, the symposium is expected to draw more than 4,000 attendees — parents and students as well as representatives from government, corporate, nonprofit and academic sectors.
There will be several speakers, including former NASA astronaut Cady Coleman, as well as numerous booths, student and corporate presentations, and networking opportunities. Organizers say the goal is to inspire students to work toward developing STEM skills while strengthening the communitywide infrastructure needed to support them.
Acha has long been an advocate for girls in STEM fields. She has served as a mentor to young women pursuing STEM careers for nearly 20 years, including participating in MentorNet and the Girls in Technology program funded by the Women in Technology Education Foundation.
Acha talks with fondness of her days at Virginia Tech, including her path toward “going Greek.”
“At first, I was a little bit leery, and it was not common at that time for female engineers to go Greek,” she said.
Nevertheless, she ended up pledging Pi Beta Phi. In her pledge class of 28 girls, six were studying to be engineers, more than 20 percent, she said.
“That’s when I realized female engineers did go Greek,” she said.
She already knew girls became engineers. With a godmother providing engineering support to the U.S. space program and a father who told her she could study anything a boy could study, Acha was well-supported in her career trajectory.
With a scholarship in hand, Acha co-oped her way through school at IBM, alternating quarters working and studying and continued to fall in love with her career choice. She graduated in 1987. Acha went on to work for a number of well-known companies, including DuPont, Bridgestone/Firestone, Black & Decker, and PricewaterhouseCoopers and later co-founded iLuMinA Solutions, which she and her partners sold in 2012.
“I loved my decision to go to Tech,” she said. “And these kids, I love talking to them about what they want to study because I think some of them are so guided by what others think. I’m excited to reach out to them and find out what they think. I remind them those four years belong to them.”