Girl Scouts STEM Day
Jiahui Song, Douglas E. Dow, Joseph Santacroce · 2020
Abstract Girl Scouts STEM Day Girl Scouts STEM day is a program at our institute to help 4th or 5th grade students explore STEM fields. The event is organized by the Society of Women Engineers. Members of Girl Scouts participate in STEM-related workshops and hear faculty members discuss their respective areas of expertise. The event was first started at our institute in 2014 with 30 students, and the number of students increased to 89 this year. In the past five years, over 270 youth participated in the skills-based workshops and hands-on projects. There are 5 different STEM workshops in this one day program: Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Science, and Manufacturing Engineering. There is about one hour for each workshop. Computer and Electrical workshops are presented in this paper. Computer Engineering project was Autonomous Mobile Robot by Arduino while Electrical Engineering project was LED dexterity challenge. A survey was conducted to collect data right after students completed each workshop to evaluate the content of the workshop. 272 girl scouts members participated in the STEM program and took the survey in the past five years. The survey shows 95% students enjoyed Electrical Engineering workshop activity while 93% of the students enjoyed Computer Engineering. Students reflected that they would like to participate more STEM related activities in the future. The program represents the Institute’s ongoing efforts to interest young women in STEM and is part of the Girl Scouts' “fun with purpose” K-12 curriculum. That initiative introduces scouts of every age to STEM to inspire them to embrace and celebrate scientific discovery and, according to the Girl Scouts of America website, “help them see how they can actually improve the world.”