It’s a Saturday morning at Tower Hill School, and classrooms in the Math and Science Center are busy with activity. In one, students are devising a quicker way to put on surgical gloves. In another, they are applying computer programming principles to the construction of a LEGO house. Elsewhere they are extracting pigments from spinach in a chemistry lab.
The students are all girls, and the projects are part of the inaugural TH-G7 Summit—a one-day conference designed to inspire young women to lead and engage in math, science, engineering, medicine, politics, computer science and business.
“Once they’re involved at a young age, then it will morph into high school and college and out into the real world,” Tower Hill senior Katy Craft said. “It’s definitely important to get it in young girls minds that STEM is for girls, too. It’s not just for guys.”
Craft was motivated to organize the summit for fellow students after attending a Perry Initiative program exposing high school girls to engineering and orthopedic surgery, fields traditionally dominated by men. She formed a committee with classmates Nicole Crivelli and Siena Sysko and several faculty members to enlist professionals to speak on campus and offer hands-on activities for girls in grades 7 through 12.
Participants explored computer science, asked questions of female scientists, practiced public speaking and tried their hands at medical devices. Middle school girls combined into groups with older students, gaining a preview of their high school classes would be like.
“I wanted to learn more about different career paths, because I’m kind of confused on what career I want to go into when I’m older,” seventh grader Nicole Neal said. “I wanted to get knowledge of all the different things that I could choose.”
A group from Temple Prosthetics and Orthotics, founded by 2017 Tower Hill graduate Morgan Rollins, had the girls try a variety of activities like tying their shoes with one hand behind their back to demonstrate what it is like to need a prosthetic device, and then exhibited their most recent design of an affordable, customizable myo-electric prosthetic. Emerson McCauley, who graduated from Tower Hill in 2017 and now studies mechanical engineering, co-led mechanical engineering sessions with one of her professors, Jenni Buckley, Ph.D., and Hita Kambhamettu, class of 2018 spoke to the girls about her experiences in math and information systems classes at Carnegie Mellon.
“I think this is great, because women do have a lot to bring to the table,” McCauley said.
The March 7 summit began with a keynote address from Sarah McBride, National Press Secretary of the Human Rights Campaign, who championed the message of the value of a female voice, ideas and presence in all arenas, especially at a young age. Participants then broke into groups for hands-on sessions led by Tower Hill alumni and parents:
Lisa Ogden, DNREC Deputy Secretary
Elizabeth Langlois, Advanced Materials Technology
Arianne Soliven, Advanced Materials Technology
James Kull, Temple Prosthetics
Reid Nichols, M.D., pediatric orthopaedic surgeon
Valerie Sill, president and CEO of DuPont Capital Management
Suzanne Clough, M.D., ArmadaHealth chief medical officer
Mona Yezdani, M.D., urologist
Mark Brown, Ph.D., software engineer
Jenni Buckley, Ph.D., professor of mechanical engineering
Emerson McCauley, mechanical engineering major
Hita Kambhamettu, information systems major
“Last spring, I attended a Girls in STEM conference, where a presenter cited a study that asked students if they wanted to be engineers,” Math Department Chair Noreen Jordan said. “Girls were twice as likely as boys to say no. But when they were asked if they would like to design a safe water system, or use DNA to solve a crime, the girls answered yes. The TH-G7 Summit was indeed a collaborative project where our female students and teachers designed the day to exhibit, spark interest and inspire young women to think about and pursue college majors and careers in STEM-related fields. There was a great vibe and a lot of energy from all those involved in the day.”
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