Girl Scout Engineering Patch

Executive Summary:

The Engineering Patch program gave Girl Scouts age 9-14 an opportunity to earn a special engineering patch by exploring these seven different engineering activities: programming robots, drawing views, making rubber items, building bridges, using a CAD program, making planes and rockets and exploring engineering careers. The program was successful since:

1. Over 600 scouts applied for the 50 available openings. Interest was high because the Girl Scouts do not offer an engineering badge.

2. About half of participants rated the workshop as fantastic.

3. SWE Pittsburgh received the Golden Triangle Award and plaque because of this program.

4. The program brought together the Girl Scouts, SWE and Carnegie Science Center resulting in a commitment for further collaboration to provide the workshop for the other 500 scouts on the waiting list. The Science Center gained a new CAD class as a result of this program and SWE has become more involved with the scouts setting up a program for their Millenium event.

DR054 Girl Scout Engineering Patch Final Report

Pittsburgh Section

The engineering patch program was designed to give Girl Scouts age 9-14 an opportunity to earn a special patch by experiencing and enjoying 7 different activities that featured various engineering skills and fields. The 45-minute activities that were prepared and facilitated by women engineers were:

1 Programming Robots - Scouts learned how to make flow charts and program a WAO II robot.

2 Views - Scouts learned about views and projections using lego blocks houses.

3 Rubber - Scouts learned about chemical safety, made rubber balls, bands and other items.

4 Bridges - Scouts learned about tension / compression and built index card and paper bridges.

5 Computer Aided Design - Scouts learned what CAD is and used a CAD program to design an iron-on patch.

6 Planes and Rockets - Scouts learned principles of aerodynamics by making planes and alka seltzer rockets.

7. Careers - Scouts learned about engineering as a career.

The workshop was presented at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Science Center which provided complimentary use of classroom space, computer room and volunteers, and robots. Scouts filled out an evaluation form at the close of the workshop.

Program goals were to:

1. Encourage girls to explore engineering as a future career by having a women engineer at each activity.

2. Fill a gap in the Girl Scout program, that does not provide an opportunity for scouts to earn a patch or badge about engineering.

3. Bring the Girl Scout organization, Carnegie Science Center and SWE together to accomplish the common goal of encouraging young ladies to enjoy science and engineering.

4. Publish a manual so others could set up a similar program.

Schedule:

July 28, 1999 -The Patch committee met and: edited the proposed flyer for marketing, determined schedule for day of workshop, selected committee members, discussed content and tried out some of the activities, took home materials and info needed to prepare for their activity.

August 99 - Group leaders produced detailed activity plans for their activity and started to generate handouts and posters. Supplies and patches were ordered. Workshop was advertised in "Cool Stuff" the Girl Scout Leaders' program book and in "Teen Talk" the magazine for older scouts. Flyers were made available at the Girl Scout Council office. Registrations were accepted. Within 3 weeks the workshop was filled.

September 99 - Tote bags with sponsor logos (Exxon, SWE, and CSC) were ordered for the CAD activity. Activity leaders presented activities for members and guests attending the Pittsburgh SWE section meeting.

October 23, 1999 - First workshop was held at The Carnegie Science Center.

January 29, 2000 - Second Workshop was held at The Carnegie Science Center

March 15, 2000 - Manual to the Publisher

Measured Results

We were hoping to register 56 scouts for our first workshop. We were overwhelmed when over 600 scouts wanted to register. We instituted a waiting list for this program and have already run a second workshop because of this demand and are seeking funding to offer more workshops.

The 56 scouts who registered for the first workshop were 9-13 years old and evaluated the workshop as follows,

42 evaluation forms were returned:

AGE:

10 were 9 years old, 11 were 10 years old, 11 were 11 years old, 6 were 12 years old, and 4 did not give an age

Overall Opinion:	My Favorite Activity:	My Least Favorite Activity:
18 Fantastic	3 Views-houses	12 Views-houses
19 Good	14 Robots	0 Robots
5 OK	4 Rubber	2 Rubber
0 Poor	0 Bridges	13 Bridges
0 Terrible	14 Computer	2 Computer
	6 Airplanes	10 Airplanes
	1 All	3 None

Would you recommend this workshop to a friend?: 36 yes 4 no. 2 maybe

How could we improve this workshop?:

Give away some robots.

Give away free robots!

I would like to do all the other activity

Have a little recess after lunch and go back to the workshops

If we got to make our own bridges

Rent out robots, I think a lot more people would come then.

Have more hands on activities, but everything was great.

More hands on activities. More less cheap activities (Food was good!)

We could get a chance to see the exhibits at the science center. Thanks it was fun!

Try some new classes. But overall it was pretty fun.

More free time to look at the science center.

Test the activities before giving them. -Thanks!

None

No, it does not need improved. It is fine how it is.

Make it longer

Make it longer!

Make it longer

Make neater stuff

Make it longer!!

No it is fine. Nothing needs to improve. This workshop is the best.

Get into it even more. Make it funny and fun.

Have more hands on activities but everything else was pretty good.

More things to make as examples.

*It was great how every work-shop had hands-on activities to really show us things!

You could give about 15-20 minutes more time.

Put more activities in it.

It's fine just the way it is

You could have a house (lego) contest

Make more games and don't make people sit around in chairs for more than 15 minutes!

At computer people kept telling you what to do when you already know how to do it.

Give away free robots

I think that everything is fine

By letting us go around the science center for an hour to view the exhibits

Make more rubber!

If we made our own

Get a better computer program.

Letting us have free time to view the exhibits

If we could keep the legos.

The Girl Scout leaders were pleased with the organization and content of the workshop.

Their suggestions:

Have more space available so the leaders could stay with the scouts during the workshop.

Accommodate a larger number of scouts at each workshop.

Shorten the length of the day 9-4:30 is too long.

________________________________________________________________________

The second workshop differed in some of the activities offered (details in lessons and problems section)

45 Girl Scouts from 6 different troops participated. Their ages ranged from 9 to14.

The Scouts rated the workshop as follows:

Fantastic: 23 Good: 19 Ok: 3 Poor: 0 Terrible: 0

Would you recommend this workshop to your friends? Yes: 44 No: 1

All of the activities received significant votes for "favorite activity". Robots and Rubber were the top choices.

The Girl Scout leaders were pleased with the event and at the Awards ceremony asked us to introduce all of our presenters and tell about our disciplines and places of employment. They requested information about purchasing robots and asked to return in the future to explore the CAD program further.

Success

The workshops were successful:

1. Evaluations were favorable.

2. Many scouts sent personal thank you notes, with drawings of the different engineering activities ("Thank you Engineering Women" "thanks for letting us understand the engineering bridges airplanes rockets and so on" and caption on a drawing of a woman "I'm an Engineer and I'm Proud"

3. There was high demand for the program in this area (Over 500 still waiting)

4. Other scout councils and SWE sections out of state are asking for our manual.

5. SWE members and volunteers had fun are willing to participate in future workshops.

6. Carnegie Science Center will continue its support for our future workshops.

7 . Because of this program the Pittsburgh Section of SWE was presented with the Golden Triangle Award and plaque "in recognition of outstanding service to the Girl Scouts of Southwestern Pennsylvania" at a special dinner.

Publicity

The following poster was made available at the Girl Scout Council office in August:

ENGINEERING PATCH

Workshop For Girl Scouts

Saturday, October 23

9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.

Carnegie Science Center

Offered by the SOCIETY OF WOMEN ENGINEERS

Hosted by the CARNEGIE SCIENCE CENTER

With the financial support of the

EXXON EDUCATION FOUNDATION

LogoãNational Engineers Week Committee

Earn a cool engineering patch by completing fun filled activities in different engineering fields.

You'll build a be part of a

program a make a rubber ball and

Make a aided design and more!

Workshop open to Junior, Cadette and Senior Scouts with advance registration. Enrollment limited to 50. $4.50 covers the cost of lunch. The workshop and patch are free. For reservations contact:

Janet Henke (412) 884-9354

3139 Woodridge Drive

Pittsburgh, PA 15227-1017

Deliverables

Engineering Patch Manual - hard copy, e-mail copy and SWE web page (future).

Lessons/Problems/Future

Set deadline for registration earlier so that cancellations can be filled with alternates.

Seven 45 - minute activities makes for too long a day. We reduced it to 6 activities for our second workshop

We eliminated the bridges activity because 1. Evaluations showed it to be the least favorite. 2. The girls worked as a group on a paper bridge and were upset that they all couldn't take one home. We replaced this civil activity with a tower building activity so each scout could take one home.

The lego blocs that we used for our views activity were hard to work with. Next time we would choose another type of blocks or just use common items.

Because of the nature of the rocket activity we set it up in on open area. We had a lot of trouble keeping people who were not a part of the workshop from joining in. (We did not have enough resources or time for outsiders to participate.). This activity was fun but took a lot of space horizontally and vertically. The alka seltzer rockets made the floor messy and slippery. We decided to eliminate this activity in the 2nd workshop.

The scouts were disappointed because they did not have time to see any exhibits at Carnegie Science Center. At the second workshop the science center issued complimentary CSC exhibits tickets whenever the girls were awarded their patches at the end of the day which could be used that day or another.

We involved SWE student members from The University of Pittsburgh. Next time we will invite those from Carnegie Mellon to help as well.

We would like scouts and/or SWE members to design an original patch.

The manual took a lot longer to prepare than expected. The publisher had difficulty reading the files so the project manager prepared and published the manual. It includes the activities used for the 2nd workshop and will be published on the SWE web page.

Budget and Actuals

Item	Budget	Actual

Blocks	$ 120.00	$108.78
Clothes line	$ 4.00	$0.00
Robot kits	$ 350.00	$143.71
Index Cards	$ 2.50	$3.62
Alka seltzer	$ 5.00	$0.00
Rubber kits	$ 86.00	$54.27
CAD software	$ 200.00	$110.81
T-shirt Transfer paper	$ 120.00	$103.09
Tote bags	$ 525.00	$386.55
Patches	$ 70.00	$325.57
Manual	$ 550.00	$300.39


Non-Budgeted

Presenter lunches		$ 270.00
Miscellaneous supplies		$ 225.71

	$ 2,032.50	$2,032.50

Date: 6-3-00

Project Manager: Janet Henke Section: Pittsburgh

Email: henkej@csc.clpgh.org Phone: 412 884-9354

Deliverables:

Engineering Patch Manual - Microsoft Word document - hard copy, e-mail file and SWE web page (future)

Select the one primary Strategic Priorty this project addressed:
Education

SWE Committees to which this report and deliverables would be of interest: