A few weekends ago I had the opportunity to be a group leader for the annual Society of Women Engineers (SWE) Art of Science event. It was the third year of putting on the event that started right here at UNM and it was better than ever!
Girl Scout Collaboration
SWE hosts the outreach event with the Girl Scouts of New Mexico trails. SWE, School of Engineering and other engineering student organization volunteers help with event set-up, take-down, running interactive, STEM activities for the girls. It is the second largest STEM event for the Girl Scouts of New Mexico trails, with around 80 attendees.
Engineering Activities
This year Hispanic Engineering and Science Organization (HESO) and American Nuclear Society (ANS) helped SWE in putting on activities for the girls. SWE implemented an outreach activity that some of us participated in at the national conference in Anaheim last year. The outreach chairs assembled escape room backpacks that used a skill from each engineering discipline to solve the problem: delivering a cure to the public after a zombie apocalypse. This was not only an activity our members enjoyed at the conference but one of the girl scouts’ favorite activities.
HESO taught the girls about electronics through play dough circuits and LED robots while ANS had many stations where the girls learned about alpha, beta, and gamma radiation. When the girls weren’t working with a student org, they were either decorating their own lab coats or talking to local professionals during speed mentoring.
Volunteers and Sponsors
SWE was lucky enough to have sponsors like Sandia National Laboratories, Honeywell, and Bohannan Huston that helped provide supplies for the activities and lunch for the girls. The event took a whole Saturday with some volunteers working up to ten hours to really make this whole thing happen.
My Role
While I stayed for the whole event, I had a pretty cool job. I lead the girls to and from activities. I had about 27 girls in my group with 3 parent volunteers. I got to know the girl scouts and even got to participate in some of the activities. To prepare for the role I had to get registered as a Girl Scout volunteer and get a background check. I really enjoyed helping out and being a part of one of the largest events SWE UNM puts on.
- Anna