3/14/2013 Meredith Staub
Written by Meredith Staub
Each summer, more than 100 high school girls come to the University of Illinois to attend GAMES Camp (Girls Adventures in Mathematics, Engineering, and Science). The camp, sponsored by Women In Engineering (WIE), is meant to give academically talented high school girls real engineering experience in a university setting, while encouraging them to enter normally male-dominated STEM fields. The most unique feature of this camp is its “tracks,” which split the program into engineering interests: chemical, biological, environmental, aerospace, electrical, materials, computer science—and now mechanical.
"This will be a weeklong opportunity for high school girls to be exposed to many diverse aspects of mechanical engineering," said MechSE assistant professor Elif Ertekin, who is a co-creator and coordinator of G-BAM along with MechSE associate professor Matthew West. "This year, the camp will focus around the theme of wind energy, and over the course of the week we will build, assemble, and test a small wind turbine."
The camp coordinators plan to show high school students the goal of mechanical engineering: to understand how machines work and learn how to design and construct new ones to solve challenging global problems. The campers will learn this through hands-on experience building and designing machines, with trips to university labs and local manufacturing companies.
As assistant director of WIE, Angela Wolters is extremely involved in the coordination of the GAMES camps and says that each track is "phenomenal."
"The experience the girls have, the type of exposure they’re getting to pure science and engineering—this isn’t a superficial experience," Wolters said. "They’re really exploring the science behind the engineering track that they’re studying, and it's just amazing. This is an all-girls camp, so the engineering experience the girls have with their peer group is a positive that continues to be echoed back to us from parents and the girls themselves."
In the years to come, girls in the G-BAM camp track may work on other projects with a global, humanitarian, or eco-friendly focus, such as building robots to clean up hazardous waste, creating prosthetics, or making water treatment systems that run on sunlight.
"I hope this gives the participants a better appreciation and understanding of what it is that we, as mechanical engineers, do," Ertekin said. "I also hope that helps to illustrate that mechanical engineering has a large role to play in addressing the critical global and societal issues that we face."
The application for the GAMES camps is open until April 12, and this year’s camp will run from July 14 to July 20, 2013.