Summer of the Girl Scientist?

BOSTON GLOBE
August 8, 1999

AT THIS CAMP, GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE MATH! SCIENCE! FUN!

By Kathy McCabe,
Globe Correspondent

LYNN -- On a grassy field near Lynn Harbor, two teams of eight middle school girls twist and turn their limber bodies into the shape of a pentagon, then a triangle, then even an obscure rhombus.

As they wiggle into position, arms and legs flailing, a cheerful cacophony fills the sea air on a sultry summer morning.

``Over here, over here.''

``This way. No, that way.''

``Move your leg,'' someone shrieks. Soon, when one of the teams correctly forms a geometric shape, its members shout, ``Eureka!''

The cheer is a fitting end to the creative exercise that is part of Eureka!, a math, science and athletic summer program for middle school girls run by the Lynn affiliate of Girls Inc., a national youth organization. The four-week program, which ended Friday, challenged seventh- and eighth-grade girls to explore math, science and technology. But for the last month, the 45 Lynn girls who attended the program, based at North Shore Community College, were squarely focused on everything from growing plants to using a computer to designing a room of their own.

Some girls came to explore new ideas and make new friends. ``I liked everything about it,'' said Dragana Draganic, 11, as she painted a cardboard model of her dream bedroom in broad strokes of red, blue, green, yellow and white. ``It's my dream room and I like it like that.''

Draganic, who came to Lynn from the war-torn Balkans 18 months ago, joined Eureka! with older sister Biljana, 12. ``I'm not speaking English very well,'' said Biljana, haltingly, in a soft voice. ``So I thought it would help me to learn better by coming here.''

Others came to Eureka! less willingly. ``My mom made me come,'' said Raisa Pena, who is 12 and a seventh-grader at Thurgood Marshall Middle School. ``She said it would help me with school and that I would learn to share stuff. I don't like sharing.''

The fickle and fun-loving side of adolescent girls is familiar to those at Girls Inc., a nonprofit group that runs after-school programs during the school year for Lynn girls, many of whom come from poor families.

Eureka! was one of three programs run by the staff this summer. Fun Dance, a summer camp for girls ages 6 to 12, runs through Sept. 4. Girls Dig It!, a new two-week urban archaeology program for 9th graders, starts this Thursday. Girls Inc. programs are funded mostly through charitable donations. Eureka!, for example, for the last three years was funded with a $300,000 grant from the Paul and Phyllis Fireman Charitable Foundation, a nonprofit created by the chairman of Reebok International and his wife. The grant runs out in January, and the agency is now looking for a new benefactor.

Girls pay just $25 to enroll in the program, and scholarships are available for needy students. An all-women's fund-raising golf tournament called, ``Ladies Teeing Off For Girls'' will be held on Sept. 1 at Gannon Municipal Golf Course in Lynn.

``The girls we serve have so much potential,'' said Patricia Driscoll, executive director of Girls Inc. in Lynn. ``But unfortunately, circumstances in their lives, and in our community, don't always support that potential. What we try to do is step in and help them think about their future.''

Through hands-on activities, Eureka! strives to change a longstanding trend among adolescent girls to shun such traditionally male-dominated subjects as math, science and technology. Although in recent years progress has been made to involve girls in math and science, a gender gap still exists, according to the American Association of University Women.

A study conducted from 1992 to 1998 by the AAUW, a national group that promotes equity in education for women and girls, found inequities between high school boys and girls in the study of math and science. While they take similar numbers of science courses, boys are more likely to take biology, chemistry and physics, three key requirements for college, according to the study.

Meanwhile, girls make up a small percentage of students in computer science classes, and are more likely to enroll in clerical and data-entry courses than advanced computer or graphics classes, the study reported.

Eureka! aims to break the mold by encouraging middle school girls to think creatively about math, science and technology at an important time in their lives. ``Middle school is a unique age group,'' said Amanda Schreckengaust, co-coordinator of Eureka!. ``Some of them think they already know a lot about themselves, their bodies, their relationships. Then there are a lot of them who still have so many questions, a real need to learn.''

Besides acting out geometry shapes, a creative math exercise offered as part of a class called ``Patterns & Problem Solving,'' the girls studied architectural design, environmental science and computers. They also learned the benefits of a fit and healthy lifestyle through daily swimming lessons, basketball and softball games, and a special teen health program called ``Mi Vida, Mi Viaje,'' Spanish for ``My Life, My Journey.''

``It was fun to learn about girl stuff,'' said Kenell Broomstein, who is 14 and lives with her father. ``We talked about safe sex, and having healthy relationships with our friends . . . I think I want to be a doctor when I grow up.''

Field trips held every Friday helped the girls set career and education goals through visits to Boston College and the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Closer to home, the girls took trips to the Northeastern University Marine Science Center in Nahant to view tidal pools, to the Ipswich River for a canoe trip, and to the Beverly YMCA to take a course on how to use ropes.

``Our goal really is to get them working together as a group. For them to get along, and ask, `How can we all work together?' We focus on group hands-on activities that make it different from school,'' Schreckengaust said.

Among the projects accomplished by seventh-graders this summer was a design exercise called ``The Bedroom of My Dreams.'' With help from instructor Ruth Gyuse, a newly minted architecture graduate of Smith College, the girls learned a computer-assisted design program that helped them map out their ideal bedroom. They then set about building cardboard models of their rooms.

``They were very enthusiastic,'' said Gyuse, who is heading to New York in the fall to work at an architecture firm. ``They all tried their best to learn some very difficult computer programs. I think they found it very challenging.''

Still, no matter how fancy a computer program is, nothing can ever tell a girl what belongs in her room. Every dream room has essential elements. First, and most important, it must have a lock on the door to keep out pesty siblings and prying parents. It must have plenty of floor space, should she decide to throw her clothes there. A mirror and a television (or two) are also required, girls said.

``This room makes me feel good,'' said Lorena Peguero, who is 12 and a seventh-grader at Breed Junior High School, as she sprinkled stars on the walls of her dream room. ``I have my own bed, a TV, a shower, a mirror and another TV. I have all these things, and my little sister can't come in. I can look out from my bed, watch TV and lock my door so no one can come in.''

Jolie Efezokhae, who is 11 and will enter seventh grade at the new middle school at the former Classical High School next month, wanted to include a water bed in her room, but said she ``couldn't figure out how to put water in cardboard.''

So she settled for a double bed with fluffy pillows, a mirror made out of aluminum foil and a flowered carpet. ``My room at home is mostly messy. I have to share it with my two cousins. This is my own room,'' she said with pride.


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PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
August 4, 1999

BE ENGINEERS? YES, THEY CAN, GIRLS LEARNING ROWAN UNIVERSITY PROGRAM TURNS THEM ON TO SCIENCE.

By Candace Heckman,
INQUIRER SUBURBAN STAFF

Once the girls pried the plastic casing off of the old digital clock, it took 12-year-olds Evelyn Jarmon and Tiffany Jassel 10 minutes to make the alarm go off.

It was a whiff of female success among the diodes, resistors, capacitors and pressure-sensitive switches in Rowan University's electrical laboratory. With the quick fix, Jarmon and Jassel were on their way to becoming engineers, professors said.

The girls, along with 18 others, are spending two weeks at the university discovering whether science should be part of their careers. They are part of a program that aims to attract women into engineering.

So far, prospects are promising.

Jarmon's eyes widened as she heard about salaries up to $80,000 for computer engineers straight out of college. She also liked her recent tour of the Sony Entertainment factory in Pitman.

The girls were excited to see how compact discs were made, Jarmon said. The pressing of Playstation game discs was exciting, but they were even more thrilled by the Ricky Martin CDs they got for tour souvenirs.

``If we can have this much fun working,'' Jarmon said as she used a flathead screwdriver to remove a circuit board from her clock, ``I can do this for a living.''

With the new program, Kauser Jahan, Rowan environmental engineering professor, is trying to lure more women to join her in the noble pursuit of science.

As long as men dominate engineering, advances in science and technology will continue to be male-oriented, Jahan said. Nine percent of the nation's engineers are women, though they make up nearly half of the overall workforce, according to the Labor Department. Women scientists are determined to level the field, promising to bring fresh angles and different problem-solving approaches to the cause.

``Most girls do not even know what an engineer does,'' Jahan said. ``If you ask them what a lawyer does, they can tell you.''

Jassel, who said her career plans are not set, said the most important thing she learned was what engineers actually did.

``When I was little, my mom brought me to the college to look around. She said she wanted to be an engineer, and I remember thinking, `But where are all the trains?' I thought engineers were train conductors.''

The program focuses on middle-school-age girls. Jahan said that is when girls lose confidence in their science and mathematic capabilities and begin worrying about their social lives.

``It's more societal pressure,'' Jahan said. ``They think that science is for the nerdy or unattractive. So by the time they get to college, if they get to college, they have already ruled out engineering.''

Last year, Jahan said, she applied for the grant and received $35,000 from the New York-based Engineering Information Foundation to create the program, Attracting Women Into Engineering. Rowan matched the grant, she said.

Rowan received 150 applications from middle-school girls in Camden, Gloucester, Cumberland and Salem Counties. Professors picked 20.

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BOSTON GLOBE
August 6, 1999

PROGRAM REVS UP YOUNG MECHANICS

By Carlos Monje Jr.,
Globe Correspondent

The partly disassembled engines sat in the middle of the trailer waiting to be put back together.

Veteran mechanics hovered above the piles of cold steel -- Bill Fitzgerald, 42, his hands stained from years of fixing Boston Water and Sewer Commission engines, Glenn Brayman, 52, who started tinkering with engines when he was 12 and later made his fortune in the truck repair business.

They did nothing.

Instead, these engine experts watched yesterday as two girls, one 10, the other 11, reassembled the camshafts and adjusted the flywheel belts. They sat idly by as middle school students worked the torque wrenches and turned the nut drivers.

This summer, nine unlikely young mechanics stripped down four small engines and put them back together as part of a summer apprenticeship program.

``They're learning physics, mechanics, and math, and they don't even realize it,'' said Brayman, founder of GMB Youth Motorsports, which sponsored the mechanics workshop at the Paul A. Dever School in Dorchester. ``I wanted to offer kids an alternative education in an industry they may not have thought was accessible to them.''

The students, ages 10 to 13, spent five weeks learning about automobile mechanics by building Briggs and Stratton five-horsepower engines commonly found in riding lawnmowers or water pumps.

Yesterday morning, all their hard work was tested as they attached the last pieces -- gas tanks and starter switches -- to their engines and tried to start them for the first time.

Rosalee Pagan, 11, and Tatsuka St. Ford, 10, were too small to pull the rip cord to start the engine they had assembled, but when volunteer mechanic Dom Rosati's pull brought the engine to life, the girls squealed with delight. Pagan threw her hands up and gave St. Ford a two-handed high- five.

``It's beautiful'' said Justin Crosby, 11, as he revved up his engine and smiled. ``I did it myself,'' Crosby yelled over the engine's din.

Brayman's engine-building program was organized by Citizen Schools, a four-year-old nonprofit program that links 9- to 14-year-olds with professionals for vocational programs.

This year Citizen Schools is running ``apprenticeships'' at 10 Boston schools in nearly 80 fields, including law and business.

The 32 students participating at the Dever School took part in nine apprenticeships, each culminating in a special project. The architecture group designed a library. The journalism group, lead by the Boston Globe's city editor, Joe Williams, wrote articles and published its own newspaper.

The Dever School apprentices will show off what they have learned at a fair Monday afternoon at Harbor Point in Dorchester.

``There's no better way of building self-esteem than by giving these kids a job to do,'' said Stephanie Davolos Harden, director of apprenticeships for Citizen Schools. ``They get to see themselves as a value to the community.''

Professionals who volunteer for the program also benefit.

As he watched the children celebrating around the engines they had built, Rosati said: ``Doesn't that feel good? It makes me feel good.''

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BOSTON GLOBE
August 1, 1999

CAMP MAKES SCIENCE FUN FOR GIRLS

By Bella English

I have to admit, my science career was short-lived and unspectacular. We dissected frogs in the ninth grade; I ended up retching in the bathroom from the sight of that poor creature splayed helplessly across my desk amidst the reek of formaldehyde. The next year, my chemistry lab was nearly blown up by some of us (sodium + water = kaboom). In college, I chose geography, which we fondly called ``Rocks for Jocks,'' because it was such a slide. I scraped by with a ``C.''

Slide, shmide.

So I was intrigued by a camp offered this summer in Easton geared toward girls and science. If only I'd been introduced to some decent, fun science, I might today know the difference between a quirk and a quark. (I might, I said.)

Three years ago, some women at the Children's Museum in Easton and Borderland State Park in Sharon, worried about research showing that girls were getting short shrift in science classes, applied for a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. The result is Girls & Science, a day camp held Tuesdays and Thursdays at Borderland during July and August. Morning sessions are offered to girls entering grades 4 and 5; afternoon sessions for girls entering grades 6, 7, and 8. The site is significant, too: Borderland was once the homestead of Blanche Ames, a well-known scientist, inventor, and suffragist.

The camp came about after the state's cultural council asked for proposals for underserved populations. Girls and science seemed to fit the bill. ``We were starting to see a lot of evidence that around middle school, girls start to lose self-confidence in general, and in particular their scores in math and science start dropping,'' said Paula Peterson, the museum's executive director. At age 9, both boys and girls have similar proficiency scores in science; by 13, the girls' scores have dropped, Peterson said.

To combat such dismal scores -- and to encourage interest in science -- the camp offers hands-on sessions with women scientists, who act as role models for the students. So far, the girls have done everything from dissecting a pig's heart to studying pond water under microscopes to doing an archeological dig.

One recent session, titled ``Doctor for a Day,'' featured a first-year medical student who showed the girls how to take their pulse rates at rest, after walking slowly around the room, after 20 jumping jacks, and, finally, after jogging. The girls used stethoscopes, which they then took home.

An archeologist took peaches, placed them in four environments, from frozen to heated, and did a lesson on preservation. She also gave each girl a penny and asked them to describe it as if they were living 5,000 years in the future. What did they notice? Who was this man, some sort of god? (No, just Abe Lincoln.) Why were there two languages on each penny? What was that weird-looking building on the back?

On a recent day, the girls sat and sketched flowers and leaves with Katherine Brown-Wing, an environmental illustrator who works for the Harvard Museum of Natural History. ``Science is a rough road for girls,'' said Brown-Wing. ``You really have to get them when they're young.'' She instructed her young artists to observe the difference between inner and outer petals and asked how many of them some day wanted to go into science; only two hands shot into the air.

Marissa Athanasiou of Easton, who will be in the seventh grade, attended science camp last summer, too. ``I don't really like science in school,'' she said. ``But I like the things we do here. It's not like school at all. It's fun.''

The girls each must keep a science journal. To get parents involved, the camp staff sends home science trivia questions. A family night is held each session at the computer center at Bridgewater State College. And each session features a field trip to an herb farm.

Renee Walker is an intern with the camp and a student at Franklin Pierce College in New Hampshire, majoring in archeology. ``I was not a great student in science,'' she said. ``It wasn't until I got to college that I got the encouragement I needed. Girls are unaware they can actually take science and make a career of it.''

Of the girls at camp, a couple have already decided on a science career. Kayla Whittaker of Easton wants to be an astronomer. ``I read a book on planets and stuff, and I became interested in life on different planets,'' she said.

Emily Harrop of Norton is interested in marine biology. ``I kind of grew up down on the Cape,'' she said, adding that she is ``fascinated by whales.''

Samantha Kone of Easton doesn't think she wants to go into science. ``I always thought it was kind of boring,'' she said, ``until I came to camp.''

The message is clear: Science teachers, do more hands-on work, encourage the girls in your classes. Parents, take time to point out the earth, the skies, and the sea to your daughters, as well as your sons.

And don't, whatever you do, mix sodium with water.

Openings remain for the last session of Girls & Science, which begins Aug. 3. Call 508-230-3789.

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WASHINGTON TIMES
July 26, 1999

STUDY FINDS SPORTS GIVE GIRLS CONFIDENCE TO TACKLE SCIENCE

Andrea Billups
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Girls who participate in sports, particularly in the eighth and 10th grades, do better in science, making them more likely to enter traditionally male-dominated professions like engineering and medicine, a study has found.

"The ability to compete, independence, self-esteem - the tremendous benefits reaped from sports participation - are the same traits women need to succeed in science," says sociologist Sandra Hanson of Catholic University, who co-wrote the report.

The study, financed by a grant from the National Science Foundation, found boys do no better in math and science than their male classmates who don't compete in sports, researchers said. And cheerleading, a popular and athletic activity for many teens, actually has a negative effect on girls' achievement in science.

"Cheerleading is a sideshow to a male activity, and it doesn't foster self-esteem in the same way as competitive sports," Miss Hanson said.

Miss Hanson and her former student Rebecca Krauss, a doctoral graduate at the university, analyzed data collected by the Department of Education's National Center for Educational Statistics from 26,200 eighth- through 12th-grade students around the country. The researchers looked at students' attitudes toward math and science, the courses they took and what they said about future jobs. Then, they analyzed data from standardized test scores taken in each year of high school along with the grades the students received in math and science.

"In all areas, the girls who had exposure to sport and participated in sport were more likely to think math and science were something they could do well in, and they were more likely to take those courses and do well in them," Miss Hanson said.

Sports give young girls the confidence to persevere in science, she added, especially in the eighth and 10th grades, a time when many teen-agers often experience a dip in self-esteem as pressure mounts to be popular, look nice and fit in.

"The support they receive in sports activities, the willingness to hang in there through something tough, that's the same thing that gets them into a physics or calculus class," Miss Hanson said.

Girls have made inroads in high school sports over the past 25 years.

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THE BALTIMORE SUN
July 24, 1999

Playing catch-up in science, math a winner for girls

Workshop teaches teens the science of beauty, products

Camp gives girls a shot at science