NORMAL - Sixteen years ago, a girl from Normal sat in the first Expanding Your Horizons conference at Illinois State University, listening to speakers talk about the careers women could have in math, science and engineering.

On Saturday, Elizabeth Sumner, now of Boise, Idaho, returned to the annual conference as its keynote speaker. She inspired the girls in the audience by describing her career, which has ranged from intelligence work for the U.S. Air Force in the Middle East to being a glider instructor-pilot.

"I'm just an ordinary girl from Normal, Illinois," she said. "Sixteen years ago, I was in your shoes."

She said she didn't get great SAT or ACT scores, but she has had a great education and works for a great company, Motive Power.

Sumner is an example of successful women in technical fields, but still too few girls follow the lead of women like her, said Carol Benson, the conference's director.

"Females are still very much a minority, especially in technology," she said.

Changing that is what the conference is all about. It brought about 100 fifth- to 10th-graders, 30 parents and several ISU education majors together with mathematicians, scientists and engineers.

Sumner attended Fairview Elementary School, Parkside Junior High School and University High School in Normal before going to the U.S. Air Force Academy from 1993 to 1997. She studied astronautics at the academy, where about 85 percent of the students were men, she said.

The Air Force sent her to earn a master's degree in aeronautics at the University of Illinois at Urbana. She left the Air Force last year because she and her husband may start a family, but she remains a major in the Idaho Air National Guard.

It's fine to take a break in a career to start a family, and one must balance life and work, she said.

"It's OK to support someone else's dream," said Sumner, who is married to an F-15 fighter pilot.

Girls not interested in flying may find another career path through a microscope.

Lori Waeste, an assistant professor of clinical laboratory science, talked about forensic science used to solve crimes and diagnose disease. Students pulled on gloves, examined petri dishes and helped solve a miniature medical mystery.

"I don't like science that much," said Ashley Byant, a 13-year-old from Turner-Drew Language Academy in Chicago. She said she is more interested in math and finances, but she followed Waeste's directions and helped solve the mystery.

"This opens young children's eyes to things they can do when they grow up," Noor Shammas of Naperville, a junior education major at ISU, said of the conference.

When Benson, a mathematics professor at ISU, chose her career, she didn't know women could be engineers.

She continues to encourage girls to learn about career options. There are success stories - including one on her own doorstep.

Elizabeth Sumner, the former Air Force officer and current project engineer, is Benson's daughter.