STEM 4 Everyone July 2018 Session Reflection

I had such an incredible time the July 21-22 weekend with the girls! They made such impactful apps together- from addressing global warming to habitat restoration to health care to girl empowerment!- I was simply amazed by all that they accomplished within the two days! Our Professional Guests gave phenomenal presentations and the girls kept asking insightful questions one after the other about their careers and why they chose to enter the STEM field. Abi Claus (Salesforce.com Administrator) and Stephanie Hickey (Neuroscience PhD) complemented each other so well and definitely provided the girls with a very invaluable experience. Throughout day 1, the girls were very engaged in the team-building activities and challenges and truly worked together to solve debugging problems and work out a solution. During day 1, I had just introduced the girls to MIT App Inventor and by the end of the day, the girls were already ready to start their own apps!

Many arrived early the next morning and even brought their own laptops so that they could have more people doing research and working on their team app! The girls worked so hard and so diligently and as I walked around from group to group- I loved the questions they asked, the concepts they were trying to apply and work through, the passion they all had to raise awareness for their selected global impact topic. It was great seeing the increased confidence each girl had as the teams proudly presented solutions or approaches on a piece of code they had figured out during our discussion rounds on the second day. I absolutely loved that two of the groups even focused directly on Women Empowerment and encouraging more girls in STEM- so happy to know that across these two days how much their mindset of STEM and girls in STEM changed and how they were ready to be advocates for STEM as well!

During our recognition ceremony, so many of you parents came- we literally had a full house! They were so encouraging and helped recognize the incredible apps each group had created with the support and help of their amazing high school mentor!

I am excited to see all the extraordinary things these girls are going to do and I am so happy that they had such a great experience immersed in STEM!