Campus news

Media advisory: Camp gives middle school girls hands-on experience in STEM fields

By Sarah Yang

ATTENTION: Education and STEM journalists

The above links to a story and video from the 2014 Girls in Engineering summer camp at UC Berkeley. Shown above is Quinn, one of the participants interviewed. (Image and video courtesy of UC Berkeley)

The above image links to the Girls in Engineering program site. Shown is Quinn, one of the participants from the 2014 summer camp. (Courtesy of UC Berkeley College of Engineering)

WHAT: Girls in Engineering” summer camp for middle school students, organized by the University of California, Berkeley, College of Engineering. The goal of the program is to inspire the next generation of female engineers by providing 5th-, 6th- and 7th-grade girls a taste of different careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. The program was developed by senior female faculty, staff and graduate students at the College of Engineering.

This week, approximately 30 girls from several Bay Area schools will be bused to the UC Berkeley campus to conduct hands-on experiments in robotics, nanotechnology, computer science and more. The girls will be taught by female faculty, staff and graduate and undergraduate students, and they will spend one day at Twitter headquarters in San Francisco with female engineers and managers there.

WHEN/WHERE: The summer’s final session of the camp is taking place this week, July 6-10. Members of the media are invited to attend the following workshops and presentations:

  • The Science of Food, 2-4 p.m., Wednesday, July 8, at the Hearst Memorial Mining Building
  • Team Presentations and Graduation Celebration, 2-4 p.m., Friday, July 10, at Sibley Auditorium, Bechtel Engineering Center.

For directions, check the online map of the campus .

WHO:

  • Claire Tomlin, professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences and faculty director of the Girls in Engineering program.
  • Lizzie Hagar-Barnard, program coordinator, Girls in Engineering program

DETAILS: The Girls in Engineering summer camp launched in 2014 with the support of grants from the National Science Foundation and the Baskin Foundation. This year’s camps received additional funding from Twitter and Sandisk Corp.