Girls in STEM summer program

Post date: Aug 21, 2016 7:36:40 PM

Hi everyone!

Over the summer, I hosted a program at our high school called Girls in STEM. It was a 5 day program targeted for 6th through 8th grade girls (though I did have a few 4th and 5th graders!) since I was trying to address to issue of young girls losing interest in STEM as they grow older, usually due to perceived stereotypes.

For the first four days, the girls learned a new lesson corresponding to one aspect of STEM (Science on Day 1, Technology on Day 2, Engineering on Day 3, Math on Day 4), and on the last day, I invited Sofia D. to speak about her experiences and made ice cream and rock candy with the girls!

Here is a more specific breakdown of every day:

1 | SCIENCE

• learned genetics concepts like Mendelian genetics, incomplete dominance, codominance, and multiple alleles

• applied multiple alleles and genetic lessons to solve a blood type mystery

• learned forensics and fingerprinting techniques

• ran an iodine fuming lab to reveal fingerprints

2 | TECHNOLOGY

• learned Scratch (MIT created computer programming language)

• worked in teams to complete Scratch challenges for each of the different block types (Motion, Looks, Sensing, etc…)

3 | ENGINEERING

• learned what genetic and civil engineering was

• did a strawberry DNA extraction experiment

• learned about forces in bridges (tension, compression) and forms

• worked in teams to build popsicle stick bridges and tested efficiencies

4 | MATHEMATICS

• watched dr. fishman’s video on counting in different bases and practiced

• decoded a message in hexadecimal

• learned about modular origami

• made snooze units, butterfly bombs, menger sponges

5 | MISCELLANEOUS

• listened to Sofia speak about her experience in STEM regarding montgomery classes and clubs, summer internships, future plans

• learned about the science behind making ice cream (freezing points) and rock candy (crystallization, super saturation)

• made home made ice cream and brought home rock candy to grow!

Overall, I was just really glad to see such young girls already have an interest in STEM and it was truly humbling to see such young students already begin to understand high school level concepts. Based on reception from the girls, I’m looking to continue having this camp in future summers. My next step is to propose my idea to the STEM board in hopes that they will take over the reigns for this program (each day a different club can host some activity/lesson).

My ultimate goal of running this camp was to expose young girls to fields that society may discourage them from exploring because if we have any hope of taking down these out-dated gender stereotypes, we need to start with the new generations. I hoped that was able to foster a passion that the girls may take with them as they grow older, but most of all, I hoped they had a fun time!

- Vicki Lu, '17

To see some photos, click here!