DeVry University put together a science education workshop called “HerWorld” on Thursday where female high schoolers statewide were invited for a hands-on approach to learning about jobs in science, math and engineering.
Though females make up 45 percent of today’s workforce, only 12 percent of girls go into science, math and engineering fields. DeVry’s science education seminar was designed to “help connect the dots between what these kids are learning in classrooms, to what they could learn at university, to what they might do after college,” said James Caldell, DeVry president.
Among the workshops was one where students learned to dissect a sheep’s heart, and another about crime-scene investigation forensics.
One of the 300 students who attended said she became interested in the conference when she learned a CSI workshop was on the agenda.
Students were prompted with a murder case, and like any classic whodunit, had to identify the suspects, their motives, how each might have done it and finally, who actually did it.
“We had to match handwriting, DNA and fingerprints” in addition to listening to suspects’ clues and their whereabouts, said Becky Moody, senior at Colorado High School in Greeley.
Though she admitted being turned on to the workshop by the popular CSI TV shows, Moody said the experience was interesting and exciting, and she is going to try to find a way to come back next year.
Another popular workshop was Sparkfun, an electronics company that taught juniors and seniors to assemble and solder their own printed circuit board to engineer an LED (light-emitting diode) “Simon says” game.
While girls were constructing, soldering and creating their own circuit boards, Anndrea Boe, director of marketing communications at Sparkfun, noted how inspiring it was to watch girls who never thought about engineering and who didn’t understand the field now working and exploring.
One of the biggest hurdles for women to overcome in science education is themselves, said Tracey Tomme, co-leader of the “Challenger” workshop and president of the Challenger Learning Center of Colorado in Colorado Springs.
These girls “don’t know what it is that they don’t want to do, except that it sounds hard and they don’t want to do it,” Tomme said about young women who don’t factor science education as part of their future.
When Tomme asked her workshop class, “How many of you want to be engineers?” two of 20 raised their hands. When she asked, “How many of you know an engineer?” the same two hands went up.
“You might not even know you think like an engineer until you get hands-on experience,” Tomme said. “They automatically think math and science mean no fun, but they don’t think of the play and exploration part of engineering.”
Victoria Barbatelli: 303-954-1698 or vbarbatelli@denverpost.com
