SciGirls Mentors | Women's Initiative at MIT

What do designing pharmaceutical drugs and prosthetic limbs, Internet programs and gaming software, and eco-friendly buildings and clean water systems have in common? They are all jobs for engineers.

This is the message engineering students from the Women’s Initiative, an MIT student program dedicated to encouraging more women to pursue careers in engineering, deliver to girls nationwide. During the month of January, enthusiastic women from the School of Engineering at MIT travel widely, speaking with high school girls about the excitement of careers in engineering.

“We want women to know that engineering is an option for them,” says Janice Mathew, an MIT junior who is majoring in chemical engineering.

Fellow student An Vu, who studies nuclear engineering, notes that visiting engineers in her own high school helped her decide on engineering. Today, as a senior at MIT, she's glad she made the leap and likes the idea of encouraging other young women to do the same. “It’s such a fun career path with many options. We do a lot of group work and use our science, math and analytical skills to solve problems. Engineering is a chance to make a difference in the world and to help other people, and that’s the message we want to get out to these young ladies.”

Want to know more? Click here to read an article about Women’s Initiative mentors recent visit to Canyon Lake High in the hill country of Texas. Know another great mentoring program like the MIT Women’s Initiative? Tell SciGirls all about it!

Behind the Scenes | NGCP Webcast

On Tuesday, February 11, 2009, SciGirls staffers Kathy Shugrue (Development Producer), Lisa Regalla (Science Editor) and Joan Freese (Web Producer) will participate in a webcast with our friends at the National Girls Collaborative Project, based in Seattle. The title of the session is: Best Practices in Creating Successful Collaborations: Lessons Learned from the National Girls Collaborative Project.

Log in from from 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM Pacific to hear Karen Peterson, Principal Investigator of the NGCP speak about collaborations. Karen is also the co-PI on the SciGirls television project. She'll be introducing us as a "collaboration in progress."

The NGCP works to strengthen capacity of existing girl-serving STEM projects by sharing promising practices, research findings and program models. Their free monthly webcasts feature practitioners and researchers from across the country who gather to share effective strategies for working with girls in STEM.

Don't miss it! To register, visit: http://www.ngcproject.org/events/webcasts.cfm

SciGirls Partners | Florida State University

SciGirls TV is an expansion and transformation of our national outreach program, also called SciGirls. Through grants, SciGirls outreach helps informal educators deliver hands-on science encouragement and career guidance to girls in their communities. Here is one of our partner's stories.

Since 2006, Florida State University’s Magnet Lab and public broadcasting station (WFSU) have been offering a two-week, hands-on SciGirls summer camp in Tallahassee, FL. The camp is split into two age groups. SciGirls I is for rising 6th and 7th graders. SciGirls II is for returning SciGirls campers and rising 8th, 9th and 10th graders.

These SciGirls just wanna have fun! Last year, SciGirls I campers conducted an invasive species survey at Wakulla Springs, explored the Marianna Caverns, and spent a day at the Magnet Lab learning about water under the Earth's mantle as well as water from outer space. They also snorkeled in the Gulf of Mexico to explore sea life. In the 2008 SciGirls II camp, girls enjoyed in-depth science experiences such as digging up bones for a forensic anthropology exercise; making models of comets from dry ice and other ingredients; and using computer programs to track invasive species.

Check out some Tallahassee SciGirls’ blog.

Applications for the 2009 camp are due April 3. Learn how to apply.

SciGirls Mentor | Patricia Wright, Primatologist

Primatologist Patricia Wright, one of the world's leading experts on lemurs, has studied the species in Madagascar for over twenty years. You know lemurs: the tiny, wide-eyed prosimians with striped tails (think King Julien from the Madagascar movies). Turns out the island of Madagascar, off the east coast of African, is the only place on the planet these creatures are found. And Wright was instrumental in helping establish the country's leading protected area for this rare wildlife. In fact, she's often called a "conservation hero" for her work.

Dr. Wright is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Stony Brook University and the Executive Director for the Institute for the Conservation of Tropical Environments. In 1986, she and her colleagues discovered a new species of lemur, the golden bamboo lemur. Want to know more? Check out the Nova special on Patricia Wright.

Do you know an interesting scientist like Dr. Wright we should feature on SciGirls? Tell us about her.

SciGirl Extraordinaire | Melissa Rey, 2008 "America's Top Young Scientist"

Meet Melissa Rey, America's Top Young Scientist for 2008! Melissa won the honor at the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge, a program that targets middle school students in the years when research indicates their interest in science begins to wane and encourages them to explore scientific concepts and creatively communicate their findings.

Participants were challenged on their knowledge of space related themes including jet propulsion, repair of the Hubble Space Telescope, Martian topography and how to simulate lunar gravity on Earth.

No doubt about it, Melissa was up to the challenge: "Whenever I solve a scientific problem, I can think of a dozen more questions about where to go next. Science questions are the most exciting because I have the chance to think of something that no one else has thought of before and I have the opportunity to make a new discovery that could change the world."

Know any other great SciGirls we should feature on TV? Send us your thoughts.

Behind the Scenes: The Birth of SciGirls

By now you’ve heard about SciGirls, the innovative TV series for ‘tweens coming to PBS in 2010. But did you know that this TV show is an outgrowth of a DragonflyTV outreach initiative called SciGirls?

DragonflyTV is an Emmy-Award Winning science TV show produced by Twin Cities Public Television (TPT). In 2004, the National Science Foundation gave TPT a grant to support the creation of a DragonflyTV outreach program targeting girls: SciGirls. The goal of SciGirls was to encourage girls’ interest in science through community-based programs that drew on the resources of DragonflyTV and key findings from research on gender and education.

Select DragonflyTV videos of women scientists and girls doing inquiry-based investigations were repackaged as “SciGirls” DVDs. Companion SciGirls Activity Guides were created as well, containing instructions for hands-on inquiry experiences based on the videos and a summary of the latest research on how to encourage girls in science. DragonflyTV distributed these resources to science centers, PBS stations, schools, and girl-serving organizations nationwide along with grants and professional development training to support their use.

Since 2005, DragonflyTV’s SciGirls outreach programs have been implemented in 25 communities, reaching more than 5,000 girls in grades 3 through 8. Each SciGirls outreach partner custom designed programs – whether they were summer camps, science clubs, or special events – that used SciGirls videos and activities to encourage girls in science.

These outreach programs were an outstanding success. But it became clear that DragonflyTV’s SciGirls outreach program – and all the other successful STEM enrichment programs for girls – could only reach a small fraction of the girls who need this kind of encouragement. TPT envisioned developing a broad-based, multimedia strategy that could inspire and enable girls in every American community to discover the excitement of science, technology, engineering and math. That is the vision of the new SciGirls television show!

SciGirls Mentor | Nerd Girls

Brains are beautiful.
Geek is Chic.
Smart is sexy.

This is the working mantra of Nerd Girls, a growing, global movement that celebrates the smart-girl individuality that’s revolutionizing our future.

Nerd Girls want to encourage other girls to change their world through Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, while embracing their feminine power.

The first Nerd Girls Club was founded by Dr. Karen Panetta at Tufts University to empower her female engineering students and challenge the stereotypes about women in engineering. Dr. Panetta has been instrumental in shifting attitudes about women engineers, utilizing film, television and web media to extend the reach of Nerd Girls.

If you know any powerful mentors like Nerd Girls, tell us about them. We're waiting to hear from you!