Girl Scouts, NSF Fund All-girl Science Camp

Women tend to be underrepresented in science and technical fields, but one novel program, "Universe Quest," run by the National Science Foundation, is quietly working to reverse that.

More than 20 girls in middle- and high school attended the week-long Universe Quest Summer Academy in San Francisco in July, according to a story by Marsha Walton on the NSF's Web site.

"It's hands on, it's not textbook, and it's not a teacher lecturing you about something. It's more, you get to do what you want to do and experience it your own way," one of the students told Walton.

The academy is all about confidence building.

"I think in elementary school from grades K-5, boys and girls are really interested in science, but I think something happens in the middle school," Sharon Parker, of the Community Science Center in Oakland, Calif., told Walton.

Walton writes that professor Carl Pennypacker from the University of California, Berkeley, played a major role at the academy.

"Boys come jumping up there and take center stage, and don't leave much space for girls to blossom," Pennypacker told Walton. "We are creating a safe, fertile ground for them to discourse, to dialogue, to see the things that really matter to them. Eventually they will have to interact with boys, of course, but they will be coming from a position of strength and confidence at that point."

The Girl Scouts of Northern California, which has a long history of supporting girls' interest in science, is a key player in Universe Quest.

"We encourage them in science. But, deeper than that is the encouragement to explore a variety of different options and gain confidence in science and technology, engineering and math," Jean Fahy, program director for the Girl Scouts of Northern California's "Girls Go Tech" initiative, told Walton. "So that they can go out and do whatever they feel is important to them as a career, whether or not it's in science and tech or something else."

Photo courtesy of stevendepolo, via Flickr