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TREKKING: Clockwise from top: Janelle Vargas of Fedde Middle School; Julianna Castellon of Haskell Middle School in ABCUSD; Sophia Chicas and Sidney Lumsdaine of Walker Junior High in Anaheim UHSD.
June 26, 2021
BY EDNA ETHINGTON
In March of 2020, La Palma-Cerritos Branch of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) chose four middle school girls to attend Tech Trek, a one- week Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) camp sponsored by AAUW California at Whittier College in the summer of 2020.
The girls werecnominated by a science or math teacher, have a 3.0 GPA or higher, an interest in math and/or science, interviewed by the branch’s Tech Trek Committee. However, Covid-19 shut it down.
Recently, four girls who were chosen by the AAUW to attend: Janelle Vargas of Fedde MS and Julianna Castellon of Haskell MS in ABCUSD, and Sophia Chicas and Sidney Lumsdaine of Walker Junior High in Anaheim UHSD.
The week-long virtual camp will be centered on a morning project-based robotics/engineering/coding class that will meet daily. It will result in a personalized creative project by the end of the week. After a lunch break, campers will hear from inspirational women speakers in the STEM field for one hour. Following the speakers’ one- hour presentations, the girls will participate in a required 90-minute workshop, and an optional 90-minute hands-on or interactive STEM workshop.
The required sessions will provide the girls with opportunities to explore the fun properties of water, build a spectrophotometer to explore lights and waves, design and build a wind turbine to raise money literally, in the air, and discover dimensions they never knew they had. There also will be optional evening sessions.
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