By: Nick Sullivan, Colorado Springs Gazette | Read it >
Nearly a dozen Colorado Springs high school students poured over their projects on Wednesday in a mobile lab parked outside Keysight Technologies. Their task? Design a community-friendly and feasible park on a finite plot of land, then pitch it to the “city council.”
Using 3D imaging software, the students rendered their ideal parks, complete with stargazing platforms, climbing walls, basketball courts and restroom facilities, among other amenities.
“First, we have a fireplace and also seating arrangements,” said student McKenna McCarthy. “All of these seating arrangements also incorporate outlets in them because you know teens love to use their phones.”
“So you have outlets in the bathroom, so you’ll need electricity and running water. What other kind of infrastructure will you need from the city?” came a question from one council member.
The city council to which they spoke was actually a panel of STEM instructors from Learning Undefeated, a Maryland-based nonprofit promoting diversity in the STEM industry, and Keysight Technologies, a local lab off Garden of the Gods Road that has partnered with Learning Undefeated to provide a weeklong boot camp for young women interested in STEM careers. The nonprofit’s mobile lab travels the country to bring accessible and intensive lab experiences to students in rural and urban communities alike.
Over the course of the week, students learn skills like 3D printing, soldering and circuitry through mini-projects before combining those skills into one comprehensive capstone on Friday: the creation of their own devices to measure temperature and humidity, which they will present to a panel of judges in a “Shark Tank”-style contest. All the while, students build soft skills, too, like public speaking and critical thinking as they field questions on their work.
Instructors demonstrate skills before releasing the students to test them out on their own and troubleshoot using their collective brain power.
“That’s the kind of thing we really want to push them to, pushing them to work independently and make mistakes,” Learning Undefeated Senior Program Manager Benedetta Naglieri said. “We don’t want them to be in classrooms spoon feeding. We want them to get the experience of being a real scientist or a real engineer, where it’s messy, but it’s fun, and the moment it works, it’s great.”
The event is a part of Learning Undefeated’s free Emerging Leaders in Engineering program, which pairs high school and college women as near-peer mentors and connects them with professionals in the field. The ultimate goal is to bridge inequalities facing women in STEM by fostering interest and granting access at a young age.
Naglieri considers the program her “baby.” Long before achieving her Ph.D. in biology, she grew up “knowing nothing” about the subject in a household where her mother emigrated from Italy and father didn’t finish college.
“I had nothing like this,” Naglieri said. “How can I give what I know now to these students that I wish I knew when I was that age?”
The lab-intensive event follows two months of biweekly virtual meetings as a part of the Emerging Leaders in Engineering program in which keynote speakers from diverse backgrounds build students’ career readiness.
Local engineer and Keysight employee Krystall Corbaley was invited to speak to the young women in person during the mobile lab’s visit this week. She spoke on the importance of school involvement and networking with professionals just like her.
“It’s a win-win-win, right?” said Michele Robinson-Pontbriand, director of corporate social responsibility at Keysight Labs. “It’s a win for the students who are participating as well as the mentors, it’s a win for the community in growing that ongoing prosperity, and it’s a win for the company because we’re looking at the development of next generation diverse technologists of the future.”
This visit marks the mobile lab’s first stop in Colorado Springs. Applications for the spring and summer 2024 program are expected to open early next year.
