1 minute read
Your SWELL Advantage
...a totally SWELL STEM workshop
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The Society of Women Engineers (at) Lakeside Lutheran—aka SWE-LL— is a branch of the national SWENext outreach program and part of the international Society of Women Engineers, which calls iteself the “world’s largest advocate and catalyst for change for women in engineering and technology.” Lakeside is one of only two high school branches in the state. Because numbers of females in engineering careers are still low, SWE-LL members want to pass along STEM excitement to the next generation too.
Our Warriors got their start with a STEM workshop for K-8 girls held on March 7, with 33 participants. “An all-girls STEM day is important because it gives them an opportunity to learn about things they aren’t going to get exposure to every day, and to do so in an environment with only girls,” said SWE-LL president Ella Butzine, a junior. “This event—beneficial because it shows them that women can be great engineers and scientists—opened up their eyes to a future they maybe never knew they could have.” Elementary scientists debate the likelihood of space travel using pasta.
After beginning with devotion, girls rotated through four hands-on stations: • elephant’s toothpaste (i.e., exothermic reaction)
• pasta rockets (propulsion/thrust)
making sorbet without a freezer (chemistry/freezing point depression)
• building marshmallow-toothpick towers (structural stability)
Disclaimer: the pasta rocket wasn’t actually hands-on . . . because it was on fire. To round out the 3-hour workship, all the girls engineered paper airplanes and took home a Mega Construx kit for future building efforts.
As fun as the day was, all the SWE-LL members knew there was another mission: sharing more about God’s creation. Senior secretary Lauren Thiele summed it up,
“The best part about the day was the opportunity to reach out to girls from all over—not just from our grade schools. We got the chance to share God’s Word with them, be role models for them, learn about them, and teach them about how exciting STEM is!”
