Girls' Inc. Eureka! participants tackle engineering challenges
Last week Engineering’s BOLD Center hosted 30 female middle school students from the Denver-Metro area in partnership with and . Girls Inc. started the program for middle and high school students which allows them to have various hands on experiences in STEM coupled with annual college visits. The BOLD Center staff and CU student mentors led the girls in a number of engineering challenges and encouraged them to pursue STEM fields.
They started off with a design challenge, led by engineering ambassador, Sydney Joffrey (ChemEngr, EnvEngr’19), and BOLD Center student assistant, Jasmine Gamboa (EnvEngr’20), to build the tallest standing structure that can hold a single marshmallow made of only spaghetti, tape and string in 25 minutes.
The challenge introduced groups to common engineering scenarios such as limited resources, deadlines, managing failure and, most importantly, collaboration and design. Many of the students were surprised to learn that an engineer’s day is not spent alone with math and data, but rather in teams working together to solve problems.
To close out the day, they toured CU Boulder including the Engineering Center and the and learned how the College of Engineering teaches and trains future engineers.
Photos courtesy of: Phillip Vo (ChemBio'20).
Jasmine Gamboa is a CU Boulder Engineering student studying environmental engineering.
Maria Kuntz is the assistant director of communications, inclusion and community in the College of Engineering and Applied Science.
