Franklin Regional science teachers are looking for female middle-schoolers with enthusiasm for engineering.
The first-ever “Wonder Women Workshop” is set for April 2, where participants will engage in STEM-based activities at Franklin Regional Senior High School. It is the first in what science teachers Monica Bruno, Rebecca Connelly and Maureen Garda hope will be a series of events.
“We’d like, ideally, to offer multiple workshops each year to girls in middle school and high school,” Bruno said.
Bruno spoke with the Trib about the plans she, Connelly and Garda have for the workshop, which was made possible through a grant from the nonprofit Franklin Regional Panther Foundation:
Q: What was the initial inspiration behind the workshop?
A: We really wanted to give female students a safe space to explore STEM concepts. Oftentimes, female students are stifled by more-outgoing male personalities in their classes and they don’t get the opportunity to shine. We wanted to show female students how cool STEM can be.
Q: What is the reasoning behind making the event for female students specifically?
A: Females are significantly underrepresented in most STEM courses and careers. Though females are approximately 50% of the general population, they are far less proportional than that in STEM world. In our engineering classes, female students make up less than 12% of currently enrolled students.
Q: In your time at Franklin Regional, how has the perception of female participation in STEM-type activities/disciplines changed?
A: I think Franklin Regional has always done a good job promoting all students, including females, to take challenging coursework. However, I think society still hasn’t figured out a way to give girls the same confidence as boys in these fields. For whatever reason, girls are more afraid to fail and failure is a natural, ever-occurring process in the world of science and engineering. My hope is that we can teach all children the resiliency they need to handle the disappointment of a product or idea not working out as planned the first time, or the first 100 times for that matter, and try again so that they can create innovative solutions to our world’s problems through science and engineering.
Q: What are some of the different things participants will take part in?
A: This first workshop is designed for girls in grades 6-8. Workshop participants will be creating e-textiles where they will sew an LED circuit onto a tote bag or pillow with conductive thread and program them to turn on and off as desired. They will also build and code VEX robots and more.
