On Nov. 7, the Center for Women’s Health Engineering hosted an outreach day with Black Girls Do STEM, a nonprofit that aims to encourage and support young women of color in the St. Louis region to successfully pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math.
In the morning, faculty spoke to the students, who were in grades six to 11, about the center and its mission and presented three hands-on activities for the students focused on mechanics of pregnancy, light-based diagnostics, and wearables.
The day included lunch on the Danforth Campus and a tour through the McKelvey School of Engineering. It concluded with a discussion about what the students learned and important problems that can be solved using STEM tools.
“The girls were really engaged, especially at the end when they listed problems they want to try to solve,” said Christine O’Brien, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and a faculty member in the Center for Women’s Health Engineering. “You could see the day had sunk in, and they thought about it more deeply. They felt empowered to dream of ways they could use STEM to solve problems important to them. In the beginning, I noticed one of the girls was intimidated and did not seem to want to be there. But by the end of the day, she was one of the most excited and engaged of the group.”
