Seven Shorewood Intermediate School students — Meredith Steele, Ava Stansbury, Elise Jacobs, Maya Lindvall, Helen Soule, Louisa Fowler, and Madeline Kuennen —were selected to be part of the GE Girls program, held at the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) on June 18-22, 2018. They joined 19 other young ladies from across the Milwaukee and Waukesha region to participate in the program, which was created to engage girls at a critical age in their development to support their continued interest in STEM areas, as well as encourage and inspire them to consider pursuing STEM-based careers.
The GE Girls program is a week-long experience that features dynamic curriculum on topics such as physics, math, chemistry, and electronics. Girls participate in numerous hands-on interactive learning exercises and skill development intended to spark their interest in building engines, understanding combustion, electronic circuitry, medical imaging, Lean principals and even the chemistry know-how needed to create lip gloss and ice cream. Soft skills, such as team building, communications, collaboration and problem solving are also integrated into the GE Girls experience.The seven SIS students who participated were accompanied by Shorewood teacher Holly Finch, with activities held at MSOE. There was no cost for the students to participate in GE Girls. GE Healthcare supports this program as a community service project.
The GE Girls program is designed to stimulate and maintain interest in science, engineering, technology and math (STEM). Today, men far outnumber women in science and technology related occupations. Studies show that middle school is a time when many girls lose interest in science and math.
GE Healthcare has a long history of supporting education and STEM activities in southeastern Wisconsin through a host of volunteer efforts including FIRST Robotics mentoring, STEM Forward programs, Junior Achievement, in classroom programs and more.
GE Girls partners in southeastern Wisconsin include GE Healthcare, GE Power, GE Women's Network, and MSOE as well as the Milwaukee Public Schools, Waukesha School System, and Shorewood School District.