By KARA NEWHOUSE | Staff WriterWhen Dorlisa Frank had to build a model deck for her freshman STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) course, she wasn't intimidated, despite others' opinions.
"Guys in my class are a little bit sexist. Especially with the deck, it was like 'no girl’s going to have to know how to do this. That’s not important for a girl. Men do this,'" the Pequea Valley High School student said.
"But my (female) partner and I got the highest grade in the class, so they can't even say anything.'"
Dorlisa plans to become a forensic scientist, and doing so would again mean moving against the grain.
Only 23 percent of STEM workers are women, according to a 2011 study by Georgetown Univerisity's Center on Education and the Workforce. By comparison, 48 percent of workers in all occupations are women.
But with emphasis on the value of STEM skills in today's economy growing, some local schools are taking steps to get more girls focused on the subjects.
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Hempfield School District, for instance, invited middle school girls to a "STEM Mini-camp" for four days after school in March.
On the first afternoon, Katie Surra, a Thaddeus Stevens professor and civil engineer, led 10 girls in an experiment that used two-liter soda bottles, sand and differently sized rocks to imitate the process of water filtration.
She encouraged the girls to "think like engineers" and talked with them about what engineers do while waiting for their systems to work.
Other STEM professors from local colleges came to the mini-camp throughout the week. Landisville Middle School eighth grader Marissa Cardenas liked the variety.
"I’m interested in this type of stuff but I don’t know what I want to be yet, so this is a great way to sample little things,” she said.
Reed Boring, a Hempfield High School engineering teacher, conducted his doctoral research on girls' enrollment in STEM courses. At the mini-camp, he said that early exposure is key.
"Middle school programs or elementary school programs — getting girls exposed, hands-on, doing stuff like you're seeing here today, gets them bought into it early, like 'hey, I didn't know I could do that.' Then they have time to choose courses if it's something they're interested in."
Manheim Township High School counselor Elizabeth Ziegler said girls also need to exposure to what's involved in STEM jobs.
At a "Women in STEM Careers" panel for MT students in late February, an engineering professor, a biomedical engineer and two landscape architects answered students' questions about their typical work day and courses they took in college and high school.
Ziegler said some of the women talked about the notion that you have to be in love with math or science to pursue such careers.
"You have to be decent at it, but they emphasized the ability to problem solve and work in team as bigger factors," she said.
Such skills were among the aspects of the Pequea Valley STEM class that Dorlisa and her classmate Mariel Stoltzfus, said they liked best.
The class revolves around group projects, like the model deck, or using gears and legos to build "slow cars."
To create the course this year, a technology teacher, an algebra teacher and a physics collaborated to integrate their curricula. So, for example, students learned how to calculate mechanical advantage in math class at the same time they were building slow cars.
The course is required for all students, and Mariel appreciated that.
She said that before the class she thought things like, "I'm clumsy, I'm not that smart. If I take a tech course, it's just going to be me and some guys."
But during the course her confidence grew.
"STEM really sparked something for me. It showed that I can be an engineer, too,” Mariel said.
She planned to continue on that path.
“I have a feeling the more tech classes I take ... it will just be me, a couple of girls and a bunch of guys. But if I get to beat them, it’s worth it.”
Dorlisa hoped the STEM class would encourage more female classmates to continue in such courses.
“I really think that girls should be into it. There’s nothing particularly manly about it. There’s a lot of careers for women in that field, so it’s really a good opportunity.”
