Event offers Girl Scouts hands-on look at science

Aubrieanna Hill has a knack for science and plans to study robotics when she's not busy building or testing rockets. Aubrieanna is 8 years old.

That future scientist was one of about 40 girls at the STEM event at Clovis Community College Saturday morning, an educational opportunity for members of the local Girl Scouts of New Mexico Trails for Curry and Roosevelt counties.

The event offered the girls, ages 5 to 17, hands-on learning for STEM education: science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Various speakers - including a nurse, a real estate agent and a technology specialist from Cannon Air Force Base - presented their careers to the girls and discussed how they use science or math in their everyday lives.

The girls rotated through seven different stations to do activities teaching them about bioengineering, electronic music, nanoscience, DNA and more. They even played an investment game, which tested their knowledge about what examples of technology they think is useful versus what they suspect is hazardous.

Emily French, a local Girl Scouts recruitment and retention specialist, helped make the STEM day possible. After approaching Anthony Salvagno, STEM coordinator for the Girl Scouts of New Mexico Trails council, the two organized the local event.

"As a STEM program manager," Salvagno said, "my job is essentially to give the girls a voice in their own STEM education. All the activities we do are based on letting them explore the topic themselves without being told, 'This is how you do it; this is what you're supposed to think about it.' It's all about them coming to the conclusion themselves and understanding the scientific process."

French said Saturday's event was the first time she's coordinated a STEM-based activity for the girls.

"From my personal experience, nobody ever taught me STEM is something you can pursue," French said. "Now that I'm an adult, it's really important for me to show the girls that you can be a female scientist; you can be a female doctor. You can do all these things.

"For me, it's especially important that they learn that by themselves - telling them, 'This is what you can be,' but not, 'This is what you should be.'"

Aubrieanna, a young Girl Scout with lofty ambitions, took the advice and ran with it.

"I'm here to experience the science in the world and learn what I didn't know before," Aubrieanna said. "I'm scientific - I really want to be a scientist, so that's why I think I should be here."

Even at 8, Aubrieanna already knows the scientific field that most interests her.

"I think I would go with robotics," she said. "I really want to build rockets and go in them, like to test, and do computers. It's a fun job, but a hard one."