Empowering Tomorrow's Innovators: Fostering a Connection Between Industry and STEM Programs for Girls

AMY PORTER: Hello, I'd like to thank everyone for joining us today. We're going to be talking about empowering tomorrow's innovators, fostering a connection between industry and STEM programs for girls.

So before we get started, I'd like to introduce myself. I'm Amy Porter. I spent 25 years in the classroom, with most of that time being at the high school level. But I also taught middle school and college.

I spent my career teaching everything under the sun, but mostly CAD, Engineering, and Architecture. While I was at Farmington Public Schools, I facilitated the Tech Girls program that you're going to learn more about. My experience with Autodesk software is in Revit, Inventor, Fusion 360, and AutoCAD. And this past June, I retired from the classroom and I'm currently looking for my next career, so hopefully something in the same area.

LAURA KALINOWSKI: And I'm Laura Kalinowski. I have over 20 years of teaching experience at the secondary and post-secondary levels. I'm also really proud that I am the co-creator of Maker Girl Mania, along with my colleague Lori Banaszak. In my district, I am the advisor to several clubs, Engineering Club and the National Technical Honor Society, for a few of them.

In my district, I'm also the Subject Area Coordinator for Career and Technical Education. For the county, I am our Referent Group Coordinator for all of the Engineering, Architecture, and Design educators. And I'm also an Adjunct Professor at Oakland Community College.

AMY PORTER: So let's take a look at what we're going to go over today. We're going to look at the key factors that inspire girls to pursue STEM careers. We're going to go over some strategies for connecting industry with STEM and also talk about plans for the future to increase inclusivity and diversity in our STEM programs.

So what are some key factors that inspire girls? My story is about a boy. I was a freshman. He was a senior. He went into this classroom that was very, very interesting and did some interesting things.

Jump ahead to my junior year, and I was finally able to take drafting. I fell in love with the subject area. And my teacher encouraged me to go to Michigan Tech for their summer camp. So I did. And in our very first class up there, the board was covered in these math equations that had all letters and no numbers. And I

Said, this is not for me. So I did what all those that can't do do, I became a teacher instead.

LAURA KALINOWSKI: And my origin story also starts with the boy. But it was my dad. I spent a lot of my summers working in my dad's workshop in the garage. He made a little makeshift wood shop. And I think in this picture here, he and I are working together to make a little sailboat. Lots of time spent problem-solving together.

So let's talk about what some of the obstacles that our female students face. First off, I want to recognize that we know that there is a lack of equal access to STEM programs. Amy and I are both from Oakland County. And our county has a lot of programs available to students. It's where the Big Three is and a lot of manufacturing.

But we recognize that that's not going to be the case across all counties, across all states, across the nation. So we know that there's a lack of equal access. There's also a shortage of mentors and role models.

A lot of the teachers that are in the classroom right now are retired engineers. And those tend to be older men. So our female students don't have someone to look up to and see in that role. There's still a cultural stigma. And there's a lack of self-confidence in math and science, especially those upper-level math and science.

There's early childhood toys that emphasize those gender roles. If you go down the pink aisle, you're more likely to see something that has makeup and beauty and motherhood. And if you're in the blue aisle, you'll find something more with competition and problem-solving.

And there's also a sharp decline of enrollment in STEM programs by the time girls reach eighth grade. So those programs that do encourage STEM careers, they're directed at our higher level kids, 9th through 12th. So if we haven't already grabbed them by the time they hit eighth grade, they may never know the careers that are available to them.

AMY PORTER: As Laura said, we are very fortunate in where we are. In Michigan, we have a couple opportunities that I wanted to share with you guys, first being that our Michigan Department of Transportation has a Transportation and Civil Engineering Program. It's a TRAC program. Teachers can go get trained in a variety of different areas, like bridge building and maglev cars. And after the training, they're given the supplies they need for the classroom.

And they do replenish those supplies for you as you go through them. So it's a great opportunity. And it also gives students a chance to have an internship, if a teacher participates in that, when they're a senior, with the Michigan Department of Transportation.

On the national level, there is the Project Lead the Way curriculum, which is what I spent the last nine years teaching. It's engineering-based, but they also have civil engineering and architecture as well as biomedical and cybersecurity. But that one comes with challenges. Every teacher has to be trained in it. It is rather expensive, as well, so that is a cost prohibitive thing for many districts.

And then, again in Michigan, we have Square One, which is an Innovative Vehicle Design competition/challenge. These can be integrated into your classroom curriculum or they can be standalone clubs. They have six different competitions or vehicles that the students can design. One is a full-sized vehicle that the students race on a track at the end of the year.

They have a mini vehicle competition that uses the tracks, remote control cars. They have a autonomous one that uses Power Wheels, like the little Power Wheel Barbie Jeep. They have an underwater vehicle one that they use in the school pools, a drone one, and then a little robot computer one as well.

LAURA KALINOWSKI: There are also all kinds of STEM opportunities outside of the school day. Again, where Amy and I are from, we're very fortunate. We have a ton of universities that specialize in different areas of engineering. And they offer different types of weekend programs, summer programs, or even day exploration programs.

There's also after-school programs. We've talked a little bit about FIRST Robotics. Our school district is really big with that. There's SkillsUSA competitions and a Michigan-based Science Olympiad, which also promotes STEM education to middle school and high school students. It started here in Michigan, but it has since gone nationwide.

Let's talk for a minute about creating female-centric programs. My colleague Lori Banaszak and I created Maker Girl Mania. And this is a one-day STEM event that we direct towards girls, kindergarten through seventh grade. We usually host this in the spring. And while we are trying to target our female population, any student can attend, and not just from our school district, but from all of the surrounding districts as well.

We have lots of little brothers that come and spend the day with us. We try to have over 25 stations that are for all of our makers to create, problem solve, build, and tinker at. And almost every station has a project that they can take home. And we think that's really important so that that learning can continue. So when they take something home to their mom or their dad or their sibling, or they bring it to school on Monday to show their teacher and classmates, that learning continues on.

We want to focus on creating these core memories. Over the years, whenever I've had the opportunity to speak to a woman in engineering, I would ask how she got into engineering. And almost always it was some sort of moment that was created by working with her dad or her mom, similar to me working in the garage, or something that they could problem-solve their way through.

It could have been a coach or a Girl Scout troop leader. But there was some memory that they remembered. And so that's what we're trying to create with our event is by inviting the parents in to help their daughters throughout the day.

We also have a costume character that we have to help inspire. And this is really much more for our younger participants. So we have Millie, the Maker Girl, who we thought of as the antithesis to a princess. Not that we don't love the princesses, but this was a character that was made to make her own costume.

And what she does is she goes around and she interacts with all of our young makers, asking them what they're working on, helping them problem solve through things, not letting them give up, and coming up with solutions together. And the young ones just love to get their picture taken with her. And now what we're seeing are the little girls that are coming through are creating their own costumes to look just like Millie.

As I said, we have over 25 stations. And every station has some sort of hands-on component to it. And that's really important for our girls to stay engaged. And we want to create this safe space for them to learn and to problem solve so that they can gain that confidence in their abilities. So while every station has a different set of challenges to it, we make sure that every child is successful in every station that we have.

Maker Girl is successful because we partner up with so many local industries and volunteers. We ask our local Maker Works to come in their out of Ann Arbor, our library, the Society of Women Engineers. We invite local areas to come in and host a table.

We have over a hundred volunteers that come in to help us make our day go smoothly. And that comprises of mostly students. And these are students, some are returning to the program because they went through Maker Girl as a kid in elementary, and now they're up in the middle school and high school level, so they'd like to give back.

This is also our Girl Scouts, our Boy Scouts, our Robotics FIRST team, which again, I can't say enough wonderful things about them. They are there to help us set up, tear down, and everything in between. So we really appreciate having RUSH Robotics in our building with us.

And of course, the Honor Society students, the National Technical Honor Societies, the National Honor Societies, these students need their volunteer hours. And it's not just Clarkston High School that has their students coming in. It's students from all of the close high schools to us that are also seeking this out.

We have a strong base of community members that want to support the program. We have some local colleges and their engineering clubs and computer science clubs that come in. We have parents that want to come in and help, and of course, our industry members that we couldn't do this without.

AMY PORTER: So at Farmington Public Schools, we had Tech Girls. As part of a state CTE program, you have to do an annual report. And the state identified that the enrollment of girls in our district in certain areas was low. So we had to come up with a strategy to market and recruit them. And Tech Girls was born from that.

Tech Girls is an after-school program and is on a much smaller scale than Laura's Maker Girl Mania. So if you're thinking it's overwhelming to have that many stations, Tech Girls might be what you're looking at. We connect our high school students with our middle school students.

Again, we're trying to target those kids so that they sign up-- or those girls, so they sign up for our classes in high school. So we primarily focus on eighth grade, but all middle school girls have been invited to attend. It's run by our Lady HackBots, which our Hack Bots is our robotics team.

The Lady HackBots is all-girls version of our robotics team that competes. And they facilitate the night. We make it a fun event. We have pizza, there's swag, they get t-shirts, backpacks, all kinds of fun things to take home with them, and then the HackBots decide on a project for them to do.

This one here that they're working on, they were soldering a Truth Teller, like a yes or no, you ask it a question and it lights up. So the girls that come in learn how to solder. The high school automotive teacher actually also participates. He teaches the girls how to weld. He has a car up on a lift and teaches them and shows them parts of the car and stuff like that.

Our event is held after school. And parents are responsible for getting their students there. And we do it once a year, normally right around scheduling so this is fresh in their mind and they're excited and they want to sign up to take these classes at the high school level.

But ideally, we would want to incorporate this more, maybe twice a year or even more than that. But the issue becomes our robotics team's facilitating this most of the time, and they have a very busy schedule as part of that as well. Initially, we were funded by Bosch, which is in our area and local. But then the Farmington Education Foundation began funding it.

LAURA KALINOWSKI: If these programs are of interest to you and you want to learn more about them Amy and I presented last year at Autodesk, Maker Girl Mania inspiring future STEM leaders, I've linked the QR code here too, so you can find it easily. You also can do a search for it. And it's the second search that comes up.

AMY PORTER: So last year, when Laura and I presented this, at the end, when we got to the discussion part, this is where the biggest questions were. How do we connect industry? Because there are a lot of people that want to get involved.

So the first question we got was, how do I even know what to do, where do I go, how do I connect with the schools. I want to help. I want to do this. I don't know what to do. The first thing is identifying the structure of your school. Then, we wanted to share with you that there are pre-existing programs out there. Things like mentorship, donations, and collaborations are also how you can collaborate.

OK, so how do you identify your local school structure? This is obviously key for if you want to work with or partner with the schools. Many schools are local based, like cities and townships. But some are going to be bigger, like counties.

This is a map of Michigan, actually. And it's color coded by regions. But Laura and I come from 43, which is Oakland County and the Oakland County School District, Oakland Schools. So there's intermediate, there's regional, there's unified, there's consolidated.

I honestly-- and I know it's not recommended, but I honestly found the best way to do this was to go to Wikipedia and type in your state's names, for example, Michigan school districts, California School districts. And that will give you a structure of how the school districts are set up, because within those school districts, you might also have tech centers and vocational schools or those might be countywide.

And also, there's things like academies, magnet schools, STEAM schools, STEM schools. And so it can be really hard to figure out where and how you connect with someone in the school. In the handout, I put a bunch of keywords for things to search for within those schools.

So for example, Laura and I are engineering and architecture teachers, so you could search a school directory for that. But oftentimes, that's not listed, things like CTE director, STEM directors, job coordinator sometimes. So we gave you a bunch of resources in the handout to help you narrow it down more.

LAURA KALINOWSKI: And there are some pre-existing programs that you can be involved in if you're interested. So the ACE program, which is Architecture, Construction, and Engineering is a mentoring program. So students sign up for this. It's about 15 weeks long.

And students are put into small groups and are paired with someone from industry somewhere within the architecture, construction, and engineering industries there. And then they're given some sort of task. And they work as a team to create usually a building of some sort.

So this past year, for the Detroit area, they were tasked with renovating the Wayne County Jail, which happens to sit in Detroit. And it's been empty for a number of years. So they were tasked with renovating what it might turn into.

There's also Manufacturing Day. So if you happen to be in an industry that is manufacturing, you could host students at your business. This is usually the first Friday in October.

NAWIC, which is the National Association of Women in Construction, have a competition that students can participate in. You could be involved with that as well as a mentor. The Society of Women Engineers, they have their high school program, SWENext. That's their Leadership Academy.

The Society of Manufacturing Engineers has their PRIME program. And then, as we've mentioned a little earlier, the FIRST Robotics always is looking for mentors. Science Olympiad, which is a science and STEM-based program that started here in Michigan but has since gone nationwide. And they are always looking for mentors and sponsors as well.

AMY PORTER: So these are just some pictures that we wanted to share of the variety of things we just discussed. First of all, on the left, those are my students last year at Manufacturing Day. We were teamed up with MacLean-Fogg, which is in Farmington Hills, which is where our school is.

They manufacture lug nut covers and lug nuts. And they actually gave all of my students swag. It was a lug nut cover with our school mascot engraved on it. The students got to go out onto the floor of the factory and see how the lug nuts are made. And then they had a nice little competition where they were going to swap out tires, see who can do it the fastest, and identify damaged lug nuts and things like that.

LAURA KALINOWSKI: And on the right side of the screen, you can see a few pictures from our RUSH Robotics team that we have here in Clarkston. The robotics isn't just about designing a robot, if you will. It is not just about driving it and competing it. It's also about how they reach out into the community and how they help other teams as well. So on the top, we can see a few students that are doing their presentation. And at the bottom, we have part of the competition.

AMY PORTER: We talked about ACE and NAWIC. On the left is one of my student's designs for NAWIC. This is from 2019. They were tasked with designing a study zone. They were given specifications on the size of the building and whatnot.

And then they had some challenges, like, for example, there was a train track that ran right next to the study zone. And they had to be able to damper the sound and the noise and all of that for the study area. Again, this is one of my students.

I believe she placed nationally with her design. She was phenomenal. And then, on the right, we have some of the drawings and sketches that some of the students produced from the jail, the Wayne County Jail project with ACE this past year in Detroit.

LAURA KALINOWSKI: So one key thing is we always want to include some sort of mentorship with our students. This is really what helps to create a strong program. When we connect our older students to our younger students, it helps to bring those younger students up through the programs.

And it's not just for those younger students, though, to see those role models in our older kids. Our older kids need to have role models. They need to see people in industry that inspire them to want to continue on in that area as well.

It also is important for teachers. So we need a community for teachers as well. We're in the classroom. And we want to stay current as to what the trends are going on in industry.

But it's hard when we are behind the desk all day. So having an industry that we can connect with that keeps us up to date on what the growing trends are only helps us to make our students better quality for their future life. And lastly, having that partner industry with schools helps to strengthen our communities.

AMY PORTER: So let's look at donations. Again, schools are more than happy to take your donations. And we've got several different ways that you can donate to schools. First of all, monetarily. Every school has an Education Foundation that you can donate money to. And what companies or people don't know is that you can often specify exactly what these funds are used for.

So for example, you can say that they're only for STEM projects. You can say that they're only for field trips and things like that. So you can specify what your money is going towards. If you want to do all-girl STEAM projects, stuff like that, you can sponsor a team. Robotics teams, obviously, are always looking for sponsors.

You can have your logo on the robot. But also, our clubs, like our SkillsUSA students and our BPA and DECA students, they will compete sometimes at a national level. And there's a cost involved with that. So you can help offset some of the costs for these teams to go compete, and these students.

And then, finally, you can donate a wing or a classroom or a lab. Locally, in Michigan, right by where I live, the all-boys school, Catholic Central, just had a $61 million STEM building that was donated and just recently opened. So if you've got $61 million laying around, you can open up a STEM lab, as well.

Schools also will happily take your materials and donations in that form, tools, equipment, machines, furniture. Reach out to the schools. See what they want. We don't want to become your dumping ground for stuff that you cherish, that you don't want anymore. But we are happy to take many things that you have, especially if you've just recently upgraded, office supplies and consumables, things like chipboard, cardboard, foamcore.

I taught outside of Middleville, Michigan, which is home to a water heater company. And they actually donated the big, huge water heater boxes. And it was fabulous because my students were able to use those for cardboard chairs and cardboard boats. So things that you might not even think of schools wanting, we might want.

More recently, I have had a slew of students whose parents were interior designers. And those offices wanted to get rid of their samples of fabric and flooring and tile and carpet. And my students do an interior design project and were so happy to have all of those samples to be able to use for their project. So things like that can easily be donated. So connect with your local schools and see what they may need.

You can donate your time. Obviously, time is very valuable. And you might not have a lot of time, but there are a variety of ways you can donate your time.

You can connect with a classroom via Zoom to share a skill or about your job. You can volunteer to help judge competitions. You can host a field trip at your company, participate in career day and join an advisory board and help give us insight into what we should be doing in our classrooms.

Laura and I just got done presenting a class just prior to this. And for those watching the video, it is Enhancing Lesson Plans and Strengthening Industry Partnerships. That is where we go into depth about how you can collaborate to have students in projects in the classroom that are involved with your industry.

Again, we talked about, on the previous slide, guests speaking via Zoom. So right now, if you're industry, there's probably teachers in here. But you'd be shocked at how many teachers go to industry level conferences and conventions and in workshops and things like that. Take the time to make the connection with people around you.

10 years ago now, I think, I was sitting at a craps table and met someone. And little did he know what happens in Vegas didn't stay in Vegas. He became a mentor to one of my students. Grace, who I showed the project of earlier, needed to create a plumbing plan for that project. And we know nothing about plumbing.

And Ricky happened to be a software writer for a plumbing plugin for Revit. And so he zoomed in and taught her how to use the plumbing plugin to do her plumbing plan for that project. So you never know who you're going to meet.

LAURA KALINOWSKI: And Bob, who I made a connection with a few years ago, is both an architect and a professor. So he's been able to Zoom in with my students. He's out in Wisconsin, I'm out in Detroit, so this seemed to be the best way for our students to connect.

He mentors them by giving them critiques on their work. So I always send him whatever my students are working on. And he makes suggestions to those students. And even though I may have made those exact same suggestions to the kids, they far more listen to someone in the industry than they do to their own teacher.

AMY PORTER: Many jobs have a volunteer component now. They want a community outreach component. So perhaps your group or your team at work needs to do some sort of outing. You can do things like judge a local competition.

I am in charge of the architecture competition for our state competition at MITES, which is the Michigan Industrial Technology Education Society. We have a competition every year. And at the state level, we need architects to come judge our projects.

And I had an architecture firm show up. And they were happy to judge our student projects. And they made an outing of it. And they were taking down names of students to look up and perhaps offer them internships and things like that.

You can help out at a STEM fair. Many schools have STEM fairs now. You can help out, have a booth there for your company, things like that. You can do things participate in Laura's Maker Girl Mania and be a volunteer for that.

Your office or company might be able to offer internships or job shadowing. We understand, with our students, that there comes an issue with their age, liability, non-disclosure agreements you have, competition, all those kinds of things. Lots of things in our area are top secret and not allowed to be shared. So we understand that there can be those issues, but there might be ways that you can still incorporate students into your office, company, or job.

In Michigan, my students, when I first started teaching, GM used to actually have a program where my students would go for half the day and work with the GM engineers on a variety of projects. And they got credit for that. GM has since modified that program. They now pair with 20 to 30 schools in the Metro Detroit area, and they have the GM Student Corps.

And these students get an opportunity to learn about the variety of jobs that GM offers. And they also give them paid summer internships, as well, for a variety of students in those programs. You can also hire a school for a project. We talked about it in our other class. But you can have them design swag, maybe keychains or stuff like that. You can have them create marketing ideas, design display items, and things like that, as well.

LAURA KALINOWSKI: And really, what we want you to know is that our students are wonderful. They have incredible skills, incredible creativity. And I know that a lot of adults tend to be a little nervous around these teenagers. But I have great kids in my classroom. They are learning the same kind of software that you are using.

So they have those Autodesk skills of Revit, Inventor, Fusion, and AutoCAD. They're doing advanced rendering. They're using the same equipment or very similar equipment to what you are using in your industry. And many of them are coming with an Autodesk Certified User Certifications. We know that they're young, but that also means that they're tech savvy and they have some really good creativity that we can tap into.

AMY PORTER: OK, and on that previous slide was my student Grace, who won the award. And we're going to look at some more of her projects here. We just wanted to share with you what our students are doing so you guys can see the level they're at so that you can perhaps bring them into your office or bring them into your project and work with them.

Again, this is my student Grace, who did the study zone. She was on the previous slide. She, one year for her projects, decided to focus on creating a fire station. This is the architectural rendering display board that she did for the fire station. She also did full working plans.

She did an animation. She did an interior rendering, exterior rendering she did balsa wood model that you can see there using my laser cutter and acrylic. And over the time she was with me, she probably won 30 architecture awards, went on to architecture school, dropped out, and became a civil engineer instead.

But we also have students, this other student here in the middle designed a flexible thumb for a project. Down here, some of Laura's students designed a honey holder using the honey that their school apiary made. And they sold this at their student craft show as a fundraiser.

And then, finally, I have some images here of my student who designed that house in Revit, then brought it into Lumion, and rendered it in Lumion, then we did the artistic watercolor rendering as well, and printed out on watercolor paper. And then, finally, that student did a 3D model of it as well, using my laser cutter, foam board, obviously trees and stuff like that as well. So our students are making some amazing things.

LAURA KALINOWSKI: Let's take a look at some plans for the future. But before we do that, let's take just a minute to step back. About 10-ish years ago, in Michigan, you can see where our numbers of our female population of students that were in our engineering and computer science classes. Clarkston was pretty much on par with the state of Michigan, which was pretty low.

But after running Maker Girl, what we saw were our numbers increased dramatically. So even across Michigan, our numbers increased. But in Clarkston, specifically, we saw us edging out and leading the rest of the state with our number of our female enrollment.

I also want to point out, though, that this could be in part to the number of female teachers that we have in Oakland County that are teaching in architecture and in engineering. We have a large number. And even across the state, our numbers have increased in the last 10 years of our female teachers.

One thing that we can do is we can inspire early. So teachers, if you're here watching this with us today, you could start a club or a program. And it doesn't have to be anything quite as big as Maker Girl. It could be something like FIRST LEGO League. You could get in with Science Olympiad and Girls Who Code.

So they have all different levels. And you can decide the level that you would like to participate in that. For the administrators that are here that are watching today, you can support the STEM curriculum with as much excitement as you do your College Bound programs.

Encourage those field trips. The teachers that are taking your kids out of campus and taking them into real industry, they're connecting those students with careers and skills that those students may not have known existed before. And then, of course, support our female-centric program initiatives.

We have a big support for things like Tech Girls and Maker Girl Mania in our communities. However, there are some people that are giving a little push back on that. They would like us to change our name to just Maker Mania and allow all students to come. And while we allow all students to come if they would like, we are trying to support our female population of students.

And lastly, for those industry that are here watching today, you can provide that mentorship that we talked about. You could be a Career Day speaker. You could sponsor field trips. You could lend financial support. You could donate your time, materials, equipment, supplies. All of that can go a really long way into a classroom.

AMY PORTER: I think Laura and I both touched on the fact that it's important to inspire our girls and instill the confidence in them. Again, in the beginning, Laura talked about how most girls bail on STEM careers because of the science and math. And I mean, I bailed on becoming an engineer because of the five semesters of calculus.

So we want to instill confidence in girls. We want to give them an environment where they see other women or females in these roles and encourage them to explore these things. The thing I tell my students with this graphic here is that I want you to fail and fail often, because fail is the first attempt in learning.

Nothing has ever been designed right the first time. You always have to go back and tweak it. And I think girls struggle with this more than boys because, for girls, they want to be right. They're embarrassed if they're wrong. They think there's only one right answer.

And as we know, in design, engineering, and architecture, there's a variety of ways to come to the conclusion of the right answer. So we want to give our girls these environments and these programs and these supports and these mentors that are going to help build them up and see that this is something that they can do.

And to end today, we just felt, especially with the Olympics, this was a very important quote to tie back to all of this for our female students. And finally, if you'd like to contact Laura or I about any of this things that we discussed in this class, this is our contact information. And we would like to thank you for joining us today and hope you guys found some valuable information that you will use in the future to help encourage more girls.