Sixteen local middle school students spent a week of their summer immersing themselves in the different aspects of STEM during the Girl Power STEM Camp hosted by Troy University.
Camp organizer Danielle Hudson started the camp five years ago for girls in 6th-8th grade in an effort to correct the “leaky pipeline” for women in STEM fields.
“Scientific literature says that middle school is the age where girls decide they don’t want to be in STEM anymore,” she said. “Before middle school, girls and boys are neck and neck as far as interests, grades and what they want to pursue in life. Middle school is where we see the ‘leaky pipeline’ start. We need women in STEM, so one of the reasons I created this camp was to expose girls to all of the fields of STEM and how it’s connected to everyday life.”
Throughout the week, activities centered around the art and STEM connection, strawberry DNA extractions to make cheese, spectroscopy and color lessons, forensics examinations, designing and building exercises, soap making and trips to the newly-opened Wiregrass Innovation Center and the George Washington Carver Interpretive Museum in Dothan, Alabama, and the ATTA, a STEM museum and history center, in Abbeville, Alabama.
The camp concluded Friday afternoon with a women in STEM roundtable discussion.
Veteran camper Maddie Sellers, Pike Liberal Arts School, returned to the camp for her third and final year.
“It’s been fun to learn about all the different things STEM can be,” she said. “My mom is a STEM teacher at the Center for Advanced Academics and Accelerated Learning (CA3L) and she signed me up in the sixth grade and I loved it, so I kept coming back. I really liked the crime scene processing activity we did this year.”
Cayleigh Howard, Banks Middle School, also returned but for her second year.
“I really liked the bedazzling and the field trips,” she said. “We did a lot of field trips and learned about science, but also art and culture. I had a lot of fun last year and wanted to come back and do it again.”
Howard is also part of the STEM program at Banks through CA3L.
“I’m the only girl in the STEM program at Banks, so I wanted to come to this, too, and be with other girls who are interested in STEM,” she said.
Howard and Sellers are part of a group of seven repeat campers. Signups for next year’s camp will be announced at a later date.
The camp is funded through grants from Wiregrass RCD and Regions Foundation.
