Workshop Invites Girls to Expand Their Horizons
Thu Mar 6 2008
A world of promising science and math careers awaits girls now in middle school. An upcoming weekend workshop will give them a chance to sample some of those careers hands on.
The Expanding Your Horizons in Science and Math workshop for girls in grades 6-8 will be held April 19 from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the Center for Educational Technologies®.
The workshop is sponsored by the West Virginia Chapter of the Association for Women in Science and supported by the Center for Educational Technologies. Girls from across the region along with parents and teachers are invited to attend.
The girls will participate in various hands-on sessions designed to increase their interest in math and science. They will also meet female role models working in math and science careers. The workshop aims to show the girls the opportunities they have in math and science.
The workshop costs only $5, and registration will close April 7. Parents can register their students online or by calling Amy Keesee at the West Virginia University Physics Department at 304-282-3527. Students will also get a T-shirt.
Two members of the Center for Educational Technologies will present sessions at the event. Dr. Meri Cummings, lab manager and science resource teacher, will present "A Crash Course in LEGO Robotics." Girls will program LEGO robots using an icon-based programming software. The icons are pictures resembling robot moving parts and sensors (such as motors and light sensors). Cummings directs the annual West Virginia FIRST LEGO League robotics tournament held at Wheeling Jesuit University.
Jane Neuenschwander, manager of the NASA Educator Resource Center, will lead the girls in trying to predict the weather in a session that will feature materials from the STORM-E distance learning simulation offered by the Challenger Learning Center® at the Center for Educational Technologies.
Women faculty and administrators from WVU and Marshall University will present a number of other workshops, covering a wide variety of topics, such as building basic electric circuits, modifying a web page using style sheets, creating 3-D graphics and animations, making "protein jewelry" to learn about DNA and RNA, performing hands-on pharmacy experiments, and learning how animals' diets relate to the shape of their skull.
Two sessions will focus particularly on parents. From 10-11 a.m. the admissions and financial aid departments at Wheeling Jesuit will present a session on preparing now to be able to send your middle school daughter to college later. From 11 a.m. to noon Lisa Montgomery of the NASA IV & V Facility in Fairmont, WV, and a member of the board of directors of the West Virginia Space Grant Consortium, will discuss career opportunities for girls in science.
