Girls Expand Horizons in Math and Science
Source: Houston Chronicle, April 25, 1996
By Annie Chen
Special to the Chronicle
Debbie Campbell remembers the isolation she felt as a math-loving high
school student who also happened to be female.
"Sometimes I was the only girl in my (math) class," she recalled before
an audience of girls attending the recent Expanding Your Horizons in
Math & Science Conference. "I remember telling my high school teacher
that I wanted to be an engineer.ŠThe teacher laughed at me and said,
'You mean you want to marry an engineer.' "
The conference, held April 13 at the Rice School, aimed to help girls in
grades six through eight combat the problems Campbell faced and show
them career opportunities for women in math and science.
The conference turnout indicates that interest in these opportunities
runs high. More than 200 girls from Houston-area schools spent the day
taking apart computers, performing DNA tests, making dental molds,
touching live oysters and doing other fun activities aimed at
stimulating and supporting their interest in math and science.
They listened to speakers like Campbell whose topics ranged from marine
biology to computer science to forensic chemistry. Sponsored in part by
the Center Research on Parallel Computation (CRPC) and the West Harris
County Branch of the American Association of University Women (AAUW),
the one-day conference offered a host of workshops.
Lyla El-Messidi, 12, was one of 22 girls in a technology workshop who
had fun ripping apart computer terminals to explore how they work.
Soon tables in the classroom were littered with disassembled modems,
keyboards and green boards of all kinds.
At another technology-oriented workshop, girls surfed the Internet.
Maya Smith, a 14-year-old student at St. John's, plans to be an
architect. Math scores in the United States "as a whole are going down,"
she said.
"It's like an artform with math as a base," she said.
Many of the girls attending the conference were undaunted by the fact
that math and science fields have been dominated by males. If the
boldness and spirit of attendees is any indication, that imbalance is
destined for the trashbin of history.
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