TROY, Ala. (TROJANVISION) — Girls from around the area came to TROY for this year’s Girl Power STEM Camp.

It’s a camp designed to expose young girls to the world of science, technology, engineering, and math.

“It was just really an opportunity to expose girls to informal science experiences,” said Danielle Hudson, a lecturer in TROY’s Chemistry Physics Department. “Because research shows that girls that are exposed to informal sciences experiences by women, have women role models, are more likely to take advanced math classes and science classes beyond high school.”

While the girls learn about STEM at the camp, they also learn other valuable life skills such as team building and working with others.

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“They gain confidence, scientific confidence,” Hudson said. “They gain self-esteem, they develop critical thinking skills, they develop skills as far as team building, and all of those things are very important. And those are soft skills that aren’t necessarily things that are taught in school. So, they do gain a lot of soft skills along with critical thinking skills while they’re here.”

The goal of the camp is to teach girls about STEM, but how exactly do they do that?

“So every day they are going something different related to STEM, to show them how the abstract concepts that they learn in the classroom during the school year, how that connects to real world life problem,” Hudson told TrojanVision. “They’re taught in a very abstract manner and so we give them an opportunity to connect that abstract with something that actually is important to them.”

The girls also got the opportunity to hold a corn snake and a hog nosed snake, whose names were James Bond and Raven.