Schools

Planning For Sixth Science and Math Career Day For Middle School Girls Begins

Westborough and Shrewsbury again are collaborating on the event.

A science, technology, engineering and math career day for Westborough and Shrewsbury girls in grades six through eight is in the works for the sixth straight year.

Planning for the 2013 Women in Science event has just begun, envisioned for a Saturday in May at Westborough’s Gibbons Middle School, Gibbons seventh-grade science teacher Lisa Greenwald said Thursday.

Greenwald is active in organizing the program, along  with Pamela Poitras, science curriculum coordinator at Shrewsbury’s Oak Middle School; and Reene Hatherley, principal of Westborough’s Mill Pond School.

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More than 200 students from the two towns would attend a panel discussion, including a question-and-answer period, and then take three hands-on workshops, Greenwald said.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Quinsigamond Community College have helped organizers find volunteer presenters, she said.

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Past workshop topics have included robotics, “environmental workshops, on cleaning and purifying water,” and computer engineering, she said.

“The kids are very excited. They love the hands-on lessons,” Greenwald said.

“It helps them say, ‘I really want to take some of these math classes, because that’s going to allow me to go into engineering,’ for example.

“They’re excited when they can do things, and they understand what they’re doing.”

More than 200 girls attended the towns’ first Women in Science workshop day six years ago, at the Oak Middle School, Greenwald said.

Such STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) events are common, including one held in Worcester, she said.

The UMass Medical School’s Regional Science Resource Center and the Central Mass STEM Network have supported the event, she said. 

Oak Middle School hosted the 2012 event, which was supported in part by the  Westborough Woman’s Club and the Rotary Club of Westborough, she said.


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