GIRLS GLIMPSE HIGH-TECH CAREERS

Jackie Johnson can change the oil, check the transmission and rotate the tires.

Johnson is the only girl in her automotive technology course at the Cape Girardeau Area Vocational Technical School. She hopes that will change.

On Tuesday, 85 sophomore girls from eight area schools toured the vocational school to get a look at some high-tech career possibilities.

Johnson, a junior at Cape Girardeau Central High School, led a group of sophomores on a tour of several technical programs at the school. She said technical fields offer lots of career possibilities, but sometimes girls don't think about automotive repair or other training.

The sophomores looked at electronics, offset printing, design drafting, air conditioning and refrigeration. They also saw two demonstrations of technology at work, courtesy of Southeast Missouri Hospital. They watched as computers and telecommunication systems allowed a pregnant woman to transmit fetal activity to the hospital and how a physician could monitor a patient from home.

The hospital also provided a unit that performs electrosurgery. Nurses used chunks of beef to demonstrated how the unit can be used to stop bleeding and for surgery.

The girls were selected by their high-school mathematics and science teachers for the introduction to high-tech and non-traditional careers.

Tara Sanford, a sophomore at Scott City High School, was fascinated by the fetal monitoring demonstration. "I think it would be exciting to be able to do that," she said.

Sanford was unaware that technology was used in so many different fields.

Jill Gibson was interested in the fetal monitoring. "I guess they are just trying to inform us of our opportunities," she said. Gibson hopes to become an industrial psychologist.

Torie McMullen of Cape Girardeau thinks she wants to be a psychiatrist. "We got to learn about a lot more things we might be interested in," she said.