Wonder girls of science
Photo by BETSY McTEAR Lauren Hibbs, 13, of Post Falls, designs a toy that uses a direct current motor while working in the electricity class Thursday during Tech Trek, a science, technology, engineering and mathematics camp especially for girls interested in STEM studies. “I think that women should be able to be engineers and scientists and all those things,” Lauren said. “People need to understand that women can do those things, too.”
Incoming Post Falls Middle School eighth-grader Allie Maurer, 12, programs a robot to perform a line dance Thursday at Tech Trek STEM camp at Eastern Washington University in Cheney. Allie and one other North Idaho girl are among 40 female students who are spending a week at the camp exploring different sciences. The national camp is held to encourage girls to pursue science, technology, engineering and mathematics, fields that are heavily dominated by males. (Photo by BETSY McTEAR)
By DEVIN WEEKS
Staff Writer
Ah, summer.
A time for catching some rays, swimming at the beach and building robots.
Wait, robots?
"I find that technology and how we can program them and stuff is really cool,” Allie Maurer, 12, said Wednesday. "It's really fun."
Allie, of Post Falls, is one of 40 incoming eighth-grade girls from North Idaho and Washington who are spending a week of their summer at Tech Trek, a STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) camp sponsored by the American Association of University Women Washington, a nonprofit that empowers women and girls through advocacy, education, philanthropy and research.
"There are many girls who say, 'This has changed my life, I didn't realize there were other girls who like science like I do,'" said Florence Young, one of the camp directors. "This is the time when girls discover boys and it's not cool to be called a nerd, but this says, 'This is something different.'"
The camp is being held at Eastern Washington University, where the campers are dissecting livers, experimenting with electricity, making their own lip gloss, studying examples of crime scenes and exploring genetics, among other projects.
"The core class is electricity and we're building circuits," said Lauren Hibbs, 13, of Post Falls. "They turn on light bulbs. You connect all kinds of different wires to make the light bulbs light up. It's so much fun, I really love it."
According to research information on the Tech Trek website, techtrek-wa.aauw.net, only 12 percent of engineers are women, and the number of women in computing has decreased from 35 percent in 1990 to 26 percent in 2015. Programs like Tech Trek place an emphasis on girls to promote more of a balance of the sexes in STEM careers.
"I think it's important because we need women in more of these professions. They're concentrated in service and education," Young said. "We need to get them into professions that have more authority and need more education and we need them to be in all segments of society so it's not men who are making most of the decisions.
"You put women at the table with their ideas and it shifts the perspective."
Lauren, who wants to be a math and science teacher when she grows up, agrees that females need more of a presence in these occupations.
"I think that women should be able to be engineers and scientists and all those things," she said. "People need to understand that women can do those things, too."
Young explained that Tech Trek started 15 years ago when AAUW of California member Marie Wolbach was the only female in her physics class and realized a change needed to happen when her daughter went to college and was the only female in her physics class years later.
Tech Trek has since expanded to several camps in California and went national in 2013. It now takes place in Florida, New Jersey, Iowa, New Mexico, Ohio and Oregon. The Washington camps are held at EWU and Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma.
Participation is by selection. Program coordinators target schools that have a high (50 percent or more) free or reduced lunch population, and the girls don't have to be straight-A students to have this opportunity. Young said it's for girls who show incentive, good decision-making and have been referred by one of their teachers. It's also only $50 per camper; the AAUW covers $1,000 of the $1,050 cost.
During one evening of the camp, female professionals dine with the campers and share with them experiences from their work. They'll be engaging with a wildlife biologist, a meteorologist, a structural engineer, a pilot and a dietician, to name a few.
"They ask interesting and intriguing questions," Young said of the campers.
The AAUW has tracked the results of this camp. A survey of campers several years after attending showed that 82 percent of them chose to take more science classes in high school, 77 percent became more interested in tech, 91 percent reported confidence and success in science classes and 96 percent went to college.
But Tech Trek isn't all about work. The girls have recreational outings as well as social time.
Lauren and Allie, both Post Falls Middle School students, have made friends from across the Northwest.
"It's pretty cool knowing there's other girls that enjoy doing other things as well, like doing science camp and math," Allie said. "There's a lot of girls here who enjoy learning about things that they've never learned before."