Can I help you find something?

SEARCH
Search by town


Search our
calendar of events

Search our Classifieds


Need help?

HOW TO USE THIS SITE

THE TRAFFIC CIRCLE FAQ

EMAIL SUPPORT










Girls get S.M.A.R.T. at Ulster BOCES
By staff2 , Aug 11 2008. Viewed 3493 times.

It’s a little after nine on Monday morning, and instructor Mark Harris is warming up his audience – 23 teenage girls – with a go-round.
“How’d you come to be here?” he asks each one.
It’s a reasonable question. While their peers sleep in or perhaps prepare for a trip to the mall or the pool, these young women are inside a flourescent-lit tech classroom at the BOCES facility in Port Ewen, prepared to devote a week of their summer vacation to learning. Predictably, quite a few answer honestly, “I was forced.” “Mom insisted.” About half, though, have an answer that tells a different story: “I was here last year, so I didn’t want to miss it.”
Girls Get S.M.A.R.T. – Summer Manufacturing and Robotics Training – is free to the participants, funded by the Fabricators & Manufacturers Association (FMA) Foundation and actor John Ratzenberger’s Nuts, Bolts and Thingamajigs Foundation (NBTF). The two organizations fund camps across the country, believing that boosting the interest of young people in manufacturing careers will combat this country’s shortage of skilled labor in this sector and revive industrial growth.
Last year, says coordinator Evelyn Torres, the participants built a robot and fashioned rings for themselves from raw metal, using design software. This year’s focus could hardly be more timely: alternative energy. The students, who come from the seventh-through 10th-grade classes all over Ulster County, will be building model houses, programming a robotic solar car and studying the chemical energy created by combining acid tablets and water.
The week-long camp will feature three field trips – one to Clinical Prosthetics in Lake Katrine, another to Sandvik Coromant manufacturing company, and not least, to the famed Orange County Choppers. Before they’re through, the girls will know more about solar, wind and hydro power. Torres says every year is a new adventure.
“One year they built a boat and christened it with a bottle of milk,” she recalls.
After finding out a little about everyone’s life goals – many don’t know, although there are several aspiring chefs, a veterinarian, and a future designer of roller coasters – and re-stressing safety precautions on the shop floor, Harris breaks the class into smaller groups and hands out the model house kits. The initial shyness is dissolving as grins break out and the volume of chatter rises. By midweek, says Torres, they will be all over Harris and the other instructors with a million questions, wanting to know more.
Torres, who’s been coordinating these camps for eight years, says the makeup of the class – about fifty percent repeat customers and a couple of younger siblings of alumni – is typical.
“Once they get into it, they have a blast,” she says. “I think it’s especially important for young women to see real live role models who excel in science and technology. This is our effort to get them excited about the possibilities.”
A single-gender classroom, she says, works best, especially with this age group and subject matter.
“This type of hands-on technology is traditionally the boys’ turf,” Torres said. “My experience is that without any chance of feeling intimidated or embarrassed, the girls open up and become very productive…It’s a great feeling, confidence, and knowing how to handle power tools or a welding torch can produce a lot of it.”



By Anne Pyburn
Ulster County Press

REPORT INAPPROPRIATE CONTENT


VIEW LAST 10 REPLIES | VIEW ALL REPLIES
WOULD YOU LIKE TO POST A COMMENT? IF SO, PLEASE REGISTER HERE