Benton Middle introduces girls to engineering and other STEM careers

Women make up 24 percent of the workforce in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and that is a statistic Benton Middle School aims to change.

“We need to expose girls to STEM careers as early as possible. Math and engineering are subjects that girls will more likely embrace when they are face-to-face with someone working in the field,” says Denise Huebner, principal of Benton, on the eve of the school’s second event celebrating careers in engineering.

“Math and STEM fields are all around us all the time,” said keynote speaker Lenora Peters Gant, senior executive at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. “From baking a cake to building roller coasters. Look at cosmetics; there is math, chemistry and engineering. It took an engineer to design that packaging, and chemistry to create the product.”

Gant was speaking to believers, an audience of 250 girls with their parents or guardians. All eagerly rotated through 10 sessions presented by mostly females, experts in their fields of aerospace engineering, health care, cyber security, gaming, sports, entertainment, fashion, law enforcement, technology, and cosmetology, and first responders. Whatever their interests, participants could discover intriguing aspects of careers, including learning about a simulator to train drone pilots, visual effect design and sound design for video games, crime scene forensics, and identifying fraud, waste, and abuse of data. In addition to having subject expertise, Gant told students they need to have strong interpersonal skills and be able to work on a team.