The Boys and Girls Clubs of North Alabama hosted dozens of young girls (ages 10-14) Tuesday morning for a one day engineering conference with the goal of introducing club girls to science, technology, engineering and math.
The conference included keynote speaker, Melissa Morrison-Ellis from Raytheon, hands-on activities and interactions with other women professionals in the engineering industry.
According to Angela O’Neil, the STEM Director for the Boys and Girls Club, this age is a critical period in career development. Many girls decide not to go into STEM fields at this age due to lack of social interaction.
“If they don’t ever see anyone that has their interest, or they don’t ever see an adult that’s in that career field then they are far less likely to go into that job,” said O’Neil.
The goal of this conference is to give girls an “up close” view of the field of engineering by participating in science and math based activities. The folks at the Boys and Girls Club feel the young girls will feel a sense of belonging when they see other women in the STEM field. They hope these interactions will help increase the number of women in STEM.
“There are less woman that go into engineering fields. It’s about a 20 percent difference between the two. Just because you look different, that’s not a bad thing. That’s actually a really good thing in engineering,” O’Neil said.
Today the young girls were able to learn about robotics and coding, as well as the five fundamentals of inventing: Ask, Brainstorm, Plan, Create, and Improve.
The Boys and Girls Club of North Alabama is hoping to make this an annual event. This year’s event was held at the Calvary Teen Center.
