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May 2017 • The PCB Magazine 39 Goldman: Absolutely. You also mentioned you were doing demonstrations at local schools in your area? Pauls: Yes, Rockwell Collins is a very big sup- porter of the STEM initiatives. They are a very active supporter of the FIRST organization and FIRST LEGO League, Dean Kamen's organiza- tion. So a number of us are volunteers, and we have developed what we call the Rockwell Col- lins Road Show, and we will go out and do sci- ence and engineering demonstrations, and we've realized that to really get the attention of the children. You can't just make it a boring sci- ence lecture. You've got to put a lot of "gee whiz" type of stuff that really gets them fired up and gets them excited, and so I've been doing that for 16 years. My colleague Dave Hillman, also an ac- tive IPC volunteer, has been doing it about 25 years, and we do 45 shows a year all through- out Iowa. It's showing some dividends too, be- cause we have some engineers at Rockwell Col- lins who are engineers because they saw us in school, and what they saw from us inspired them to become an engineer. Goldman: It's nice that you have that feedback, and saw the loop completed. Pauls: It's very gratifying. Goldman: You also mentioned that you tell girls the same thing. Have you seen that side of it come through? Pauls: Yes. You know, in a lot of the urban schools, they've made great strides in making sure there's equal opportunity for both male and female, but you get out in some of the rural ar- eas and there's still that concept of "well, science and engineering are for guys and not for girls." And we do what we can to battle that concept, because at Rockwell Collins, in fact all the com- panies that I've worked with, some of the most talented scientists and engineers have been the women scientists and engineers. So we try and get them interested whenever we can. I also, as part of Rockwell Collins, partici- pate in what we call job shadows. A job shad- ow there is with individuals from local high schools, usually sophomore to senior level. If they're interested in a particular area, they can come into Rockwell Collins for a day, follow us around, we explain what we do, how we, as this particular type of engineer, fit into the big picture, and I've had a number of young ladies who said that they decided to become materials engineers based upon that day and the excite- ment and the passion that I shared about that type of science. It's tremendously satisfying. Goldman: I'll bet it is, because, it wouldn't have happened if you hadn't done that. It's kind of like "take your kid to work" day, but it's not just that day, and apparently, it's a lot more effec - tive, so that's pretty neat. You mentioned the key- note speaker this morning, which again is along the same line, Mayim Bialik, from "The Big Bang Theory." Pauls: When she was talking about how a men- tor got her going into the areas of science, some- thing that she hadn't thought about before, I was sitting with a number of my colleagues from Rockwell Collins, all who were involved in the Road Show as well. That really resonat- ed with all of us, in that we really need to get together with kids today, male and female, and share with them our passion for science, our passion for engineering, and give them a vision that it's not just nerds at a computer, but this is something that's an integral part of how planes fly, and how bridges are erected. ROCKWELL COLLINS' DOUG PAULS DISCUSSES VOLUNTEERING, MENTORING AND THEIR ROAD SHOW