A TRAVELING EXHIBITION OF 
CURTISS-WRIGHT CADETTE STORIES & ARTIFACTS
 
PLUS! An AERONAUTICAL LABORATORY for YOUNG WOMEN!!

PURPOSE OF PROJECT

American educational and governmental programs are moving towards greater inclusion of women via STEM PROGRAMS (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). But Aerospace Departments have not caught up with the trend in engineering (only 13% of aero students are female). The Curtiss-Wright Cadettes Project aims to help create parity for women in these departments and open the door for equal participation of women engineers in aerospace companies and government transportation planning agencies.

72 years ago, the U.S. government, with the blessing of the Army and the Navy, paid Curtiss-Wright Airplane Company $2 million to train women for 10 months in aeronautical engineering at seven universities. 918 women received training and 766 (or 83%) reported to work in Curtiss-Wright plants. (The 7 schools that trained the Cadettes were: Purdue, RPI, Penn State, Cornell, U. of Minnesota, Iowa State, and U. of Texas.)

The mission of the Curtiss-Wright Cadettes Project is to use the legacy of the Cadettes as an inspiration to young women considering careers in engineering and show universities the value of training women aero-engineers. The Project will restore the Cadettes to aviation history, using artifacts, documentation, and film/video. Initially, these materials will be installed in a unique, portable “exhibition and lab,” which will evolve into a permanent display and interactive learning module housed at a primary aviation, history, or science museum.
DESCRIPTION & LAYOUT 
The history of the Curtiss-Wright Cadettes will frame the environments and activities in all four rooms, providing an atmospheric backdrop in each room. Voices and images of the Cadettes will be present throughout. The  Cadettes Project Collection contains 30 video interviews with Cadettes, verbatim stories from more than 50 others, and a large selection of photos of Cadettes at school, in the plants, and at play. The Collection also includes news clippings, Curtiss-Wright Company publications, all six issues of “The Cadetter” (which includes drawings, writings, and songs by Cadettes during their training), and several editions of “Gazettes” published independently by Cadettes from individual universities, tracking their work, family life, and activities after the war. 
Artifacts: slide-rules, drafting tools, aviation drawings and blueprints by Cadettes, personal scrapbooks, engineering/math workbooks, aero-engineering textbooks, plant badges, and a uniform worn only by University of Texas Cadettes.
In the PEALE exhibit/lab, several young women at a time will explore each of the rooms in a timed rotation. When they emerge, they will receive a simplified version of the “Certificate of Completion” the Cadettes were given after 10 grueling months of university training. The lab will be staffed by "experiential assistants" (female engineering students and grads from Aero-Engineering Departments) to guide the young women through the labs.

LOGISTICS/construction
The four-room structure’s walls collapse into shippable crates which house the informational panels, educational materials, mannequins, work clothes, chairs, lights, drafting equipment/tools, mini wind tunnel, and creative/play materials. A heavy laboratory table (for the Busting Lab), two drafting tables, and a large crafting and assembling table will be designed to be easily disassembled and fit into the crates.

Portable Engineering Aviation 
Laboratory & Exhibition (PEALE)

PEALE is designed to help young women visualize and experience themselves as working aero-engineers. The aim is to awaken 
and challenge young women, encouraging them to pursue 
educational and career paths in aviation design and engineering. 

ROOM 1: KNOWING — The Legacy Lab
LEARNING ABOUT THE CADETTE LEGACY

A room that recreates university and plant environments the Cadettes worked in. Background information (using photos, videos, mannequins, music) on the Cadettes at school and in Curtiss-Wright’s airframe and propeller plants. Information on the Cadettes’ work in the professional world after the war. Cadettes became architects, aero-engineers, public school and university professors (physics, mathematics, aero-engineering, astronomy, social sciences), city planners, professional draftsmen, and computer programmers, drawing on their training and experience at Curtiss-Wright.

Materials for Knowing/Legacy
Models/mannequins with typical Cadette attire, including clothing worn to shop classes and for their work as inspectors at the plants. Also, a uniform worn by University of Texas Cadettes. In preparation for Room 2, young women on the tour will dress in lab coats and/or smocks, protective workboots, coveralls, hair scarves/bandanas, gloves, and welding goggles, with slide-rule cases to wear on their belts.    

ROOM 2: BUSTING — Materials Testing Lab
GENDER STEREOTYPE DECONDITIONING   

Permission to enter the “boy’s world” of mechanics and aviation design via mini-trainings in dismantling, deconstructing, and otherwise destroying pre-made mechanical, electronic, and manually assembled items that they would ordinarily hesitate to touch. At Purdue University, the Cadettes (and all the male engineers) referred to their stress analysis workshop as the “Busting Lab.” They described with great glee how they “tensed as a piece of stock reached its breaking point in a tension test” and “watched with unconcealed amazement while steel tubes wrinkled like paper” as a huge machine exerted a compression force. Obviously, these kinds of materials and stress tests are beyond the scope of PEALE, but lesser modes of “decommissioning” can also be demonstrated/experienced.

Materials for Busting/Testing
Mechanical and electronic objects; wooden and plastic aviation models, other dismantable, wreckable, and dissolvable items, including dolls with mechanical functions (speaking, wetting, walking, etc.). Recyling bins for parts (some to be melted down and others reusable/saleable, such as magnets and copper) will be provided. The young women can work in pairs to accomplish the deconstruction tasks. 

ROOM 3: MEASURING — Aerodynamics Lab
PERSONAL IDENTIFICATION WITH AERO-ENGINEERING

Personal identification with the role of aero-engineer will be encouraged via an educational slideshow/presentation that demonstrates connections between fashion design (flying saucer shaped hats of the 60s, for instance) and various airplane and other flying vehicle designs; between cooking and concocting mechanical inventions, using math and measurement. “What is ‘lift’ and how can you use wind to create it personally?”

Cadettes described “running the throttle on the wind tunnel engine and listening to the air-stream roaring through the tubes” and “the sheer pleasure of running the pressure up until the mercury threatens to drop through the bottom of the manometer, till the thermometer is all but torn from the side of the tunnel, till the whole building shakes as if a small earthquake were upon us.”

Materials for Measuring
A mini wind tunnel and/or smoke tunnel, as well as a display of the tools of math needed for recording test results. This includes slide-rules, graph paper, calculation machines, nanometers, thermometers, kitchen and laboratory measuring devices, and handheld/electronic calculators.

ROOM 4: MAKING/DESIGNING — Drafting/Drawing Lab
PERSONAL INITIATIVE AND INNOVATION
An opportunity to play with and shape the raw materials of aviation design. The young women will be encouraged to draw or manually assemble these materials into whatever they like. A display of fanciful airplane drawings and oral descriptions by Cadettes (gliders attached to commuter trains, negative dihedral wing designs), and futuristic designs that were envisioned (or actually created) by aviation inventors (the Flying Pancake, the Taylor Aerocar, Gizmo helicopters), and recent inventions like the Autogyro/Gyroplane and the Transition, a “roadable airplane” designed by three MIT aero-engineering grads, one of whom is a woman.

Materials for Making/Designing
Parts and pieces from previous aeronautical inventions, including early aviation shop materials (cloth, leather, paper, wood, putty, plastic, metal, twine, glue). Drafting tables with stools. Drawing and drafting tools, papers, inks, erasers. Paints, glitter, nail polish, and decals for final decoration of aviation designs.
Wild Hare Press        copyright 2017