FEATURES | MAY 2014
Breaking up the boy’s club BAY AREA PROGRAMS ENCOURAGE FEMALE REPRESENTATION IN STEM Text by ANAND SRINIVASAN and ESME ABLAZA Photography by ANA SOFIA AMEIVA-WANG
T
HE WHIR OF MACHINERY BUZZes from within a jumble of wires that make up the innards of a 120 pound steel and aluminum contraption. The stout, Wall-E-like robot zooms across the floor of a lab at the NASA Ames Research Center, careening in jerking spasms as it smashes its outreached arms over yoga balls, swallowing them up into its belly. Palo Alto High School junior Rachel Berry furrows her brow in concentration behind a plexiglass screen as she stands at the robot’s drive station, directing its every move. Berry is a member of Space Cookies, an all-girls robotics team founded by NASA and Girl Scouts in 2005, and one of several programs whose main objective is to encourage girls to follow careers in typically male-dominated science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. Like Space Cookies, programs such as Girls Innovate and Technovation also try to help girls interested in STEM pursue their passions. Space Cookies Starting with only 12 girls in its first year, the Girl Scout troop Space Cookies has grown to over 80 members in the past decade. Girls from roughly 25 school districts in the Bay Area come to Space Cookies, some simply in search of a new troop, others because their school does not have a robotics team. Still more made their first drive to the NASA Ames Research Center purely with the intention of enhancing their college resumes. No matter their original incentive for joining, most members soon came to appreciate the nurturing and community-based program. “It started with me looking for something to do, but now I do it cause I love it,” says Maddy Augustine, a member of the Space Cookies leadership team and senior from Pinewood High School. The Space Cookies have acquired a considerably strong reputation over the years, proving they are a force to be reckoned with. The team has gone to Sacramento Davis Regional and Silicon Valley Regionals, in addition to consistently qualifying for the World Championships for Robotics every year since 2005 except 32
for 2013. More importantly, Space Cookies succeeds in promoting continued STEM interest in collegebound members, according to Augustine. “All of our girls go to college, and 94 percent of our girls go into a college focusing on a STEM major,” Augustine says. “Those who don’t have gone into economics and architecture, so even though they are not technically studying STEM, they’re still very math focused.” Despite their competitive and personal victories, the Space Cookies have faced several obstacles on their hard-earned path to success. Though outright sexism has never been an issue, the Space Cookies have had to deal with off-hand remarks and attitudes from their mostly male competitors. “The year before I joined, at the Sacramento Regional in 2012, the robot was supposed to shoot basketballs, and during one of the matches the announcer said that the robot shot like a girl,” says Ivy Li, Paly sophomore and Space Cookies team member. “It was an example of how some things can sound really off-hand and not directly sexist, but they can be very offensive.” Another issue the Space Cookies have faced this past year relates to a massive membership increase. “We’ve grown from 50 to 80 girls in the last year,” says Shivali Minocha, a member of the leadership team. “We’ve had to organize meetings so that every girl is still involved and give rookies (first year team members) a good education on our program.” No prior robotics experience or Girl Scouts membership is necessary in order to obtain a spot on the team. The only requirement is that all members are high school girls. However, if a member wishes to attend an overnight competition, she must demonstrate her commitment by logging a certain number of hours in the lab. Build season begins on the first Saturday of January and continues for six weeks, over the course of which Space Cookies spend at least 100 hours in the lab, logging an average of eight