UH Engineering drives STEM exploration for Windward Girl Scouts

Girl Scouts from Troop 700, a Windward Oʻahu troop spanning Daisies through Ambassadors, earned a STEM career awareness badge during a recent event hosted by the UH College of Engineering in collaboration with the UH STEM Pre-Academy.

Designed for girls in kindergarten through fifth grade, the program introduced participants to engineering through a career-awareness activity, conversations with UH-affiliated engineers, and a hands-on catapult challenge. UH College of Engineering alumnae Katlynn Vicuna, a propulsion engineer, and Kiana Yamat, a civil engineer, helped show the girls what engineering can look like in real life.

Working in pairs, the Girl Scouts built catapults, launched pom-poms across the room, and measured the results, giving them a chance to explore engineering design through building, testing, and reflection.

Girls also completed a career-interest survey for elementary students developed by the STEM Pre-Academy based on the RIASEC model.

“I liked building catapults and measuring how far the pom-poms went,” said Emilia Oshiro, an 8-year-old Brownie Girl Scout. “It’s important for engineers to keep trying until they build something correctly and also to be able to write and follow plans. I liked filling in the bubbles on the career survey.”

“As both a parent of a young girl and a UH employee, I appreciate that UH offers these opportunities for girls to see themselves in STEM careers,” said Lauren Kaupp, MS, EdD, director of the STEM Pre-Academy. “It’s fantastic that a team of UH students, staff, and alumni can come together to create such positive experiences.”

“Seeing the girls throw on their hard hats and have fun with the engineering process was the highlight of the day,” said UH Engineering Student Ambassador Jenny Brown. “That natural engineering intuition, the way they worked in teams and experimented to solve problems, is inside everyone, and today the Windward Girl Scout troop was a shining example of our future engineers.”

The event combined STEM learning with hands-on fun while helping the girls think about future career paths.