This year's theme was "Molding Successful Women Engineers."
The conference focused on inspiring women to pursue engineering professions.
"At Texas Tech I'm making it one of my priorities. We're about 13% women. The national average is about 18% women. What I hope to do in the next five years or so is to get close to 30% women," said Al Sacco Jr., Dean of the Whitacre College of Engineering at Texas Tech.
Sacco said he hopes the assembly will elevate female interest in engineering careers.
"The bottom line is women are deep thinkers. In my opinion they're deeper thinkers than men are. I don't know why that is. Women engineers that I know really think of problems in a much deeper way than men. Men are more superficial about them," Sacco said.
Young women like Shelby Schoepf, a Junior Environmental Engineering Student at Texas Tech, and Rachel Hutchinson, a Junior INdustrial Engineering Student, said pursuing an engineering career can be overwhelming.
"It can be very intimidating, especially going to class. I know in some of my bigger classes there might be 200 of us in there and then 15 girls," Schoepf said.
"As a minority I feel like there are some challenges. At the same time I feel like we have a little bit of an advantage because there is so few of us that companies tend to hire us more," Hutchinson said.
Both ladies got an opportunity to explore some of those companies. The conference welcomed around 25 businesses that rely on engineering like the CIA, the U.S. Navy and oil corporations. Chevron Facility Engineer, Brittany Wright, offered some advice for women aspiring to be engineers.
"Get into the field as soon as possible. Get an assignment that gets you dirty and gets you to build things and to make things. That's how you get technical competence. That's also how you gain confidence in yourself. When you have both that really makes you a good engineer," Wright said.
The conference offered networking, career building workshops and a career fair. Those tools aim to help girls like Schoepf and Hutchinson step closer to their dreams.
"I chose environmental because I'm very passionate about our environment. I like recycling and making things sustainable," Schoepf said.
"I grew up 15 minutes from NASA so that's actually my dream place to work," Hutchinson said.
The event was organized by more than 40 girls in Tech's School of Engineering and welcomed around 200 professional and collegiate women engineers.
