ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Hundreds of middle school and high school girls will investigate rocketry, solar fountains, crime scenes and seismic waves at the annual Expanding Your Horizons (EYH) workshop in Albuquerque on April 3. The event is sponsored by Sandia National Laboratories, and is designed to encourage girls to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM. Girls have the opportunity to meet and interact with professional women in those fields during small group workshops.
“This program encourages young women to pursue technical careers,” said Sandia’s K-12 education program manager Amy Tapia. “The workshops give Sandia scientists and engineers the opportunity to personally share their careers with the young women of New Mexico.”
The New Mexico Network for Women in Science and Engineering (NMNWSE) organizes the one-day event, which drew more than 150 girls from around the area last year. This year, coordinators are expecting to attract more than double that number. The program will take place from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Smith Brasher Hall on the Central New Mexico Community College campus. NMNWSE is coordinating three other Expanding Your Horizons workshops this year: March 27 in Silver City, April 6 in Los Alamos and May 26 in Santa Fe.
This year’s program offers about 20 career exploration workshops in topics such as astronomy, marine biology, forensics, medicine, oceanography, physics, computer science, meteorology and materials engineering. Workshops are typically limited to 10-15 girls to encourage hands-on learning and interaction with presenters. Each participant is invited to attend three workshops, in addition to panel presentations from young women scientists and engineers. “It’s important to us to include panel discussions from young women scientists, and to encourage questions from the participants,” Albuquerque EYH chairwoman Diane Albert said. “We want these girls to see other women who aren’t much older than they are succeeding and having fun in these careers.”
National studies indicate that boys and girls report equal interest and confidence in STEM subjects in elementary school, but by the sixth grade, girls begin to perceive them as subjects for boys, and their interest starts waning. To address those concerns, EYH offers simultaneous programs for parents and educators to discuss preparing and paying for college and sustaining student interest in math and science.
Albert has been involved in the New Mexico Expanding Your Horizons workshops for the past 16 years, first as a material scientist and engineer at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and now as an Albuquerque patent attorney. “These workshops are critically important,” Albert said. “We impact every single girl who attends. They see that these women care and that we’re just normal women, but we want them to know about the careers that are available to them.”