Girls Engage Technology | Women In STEM

Saturday Academy is dedicated to inspiring girls in technology and engineering, where women are currently significantly under-represented (e.g., women receive 19% of computer science bachelor's degrees). We do this through classes & camps designed specifically for students who identify as girls.

Our Girls Engage Technology (GET) program provides positive programming experiences to young girls to increase their confidence and interest in technology before and during middle school. Classes are offered in-person and online.

GET classes are free to all girls because of generous grants from American Association of University Women, First Tech Credit Union, Lam Research, Thermo Fisher Scientific and Women in Science: Portland.

GET partners with Girl Scouts of Oregon and SW Washington and Inukai Boys & Girls Club.

Upcoming Classes for Girls

To request a GET class for a group of 5 to 12 students who identify as girls, please visit our SA2U page and contact amber@saturdayacademy.org.

Digital Game Design (Grades 4-8, Online or In-person): Expand your computer skills and create a computer game. Pick a good theme (e.g., educational/First aid/“green” living) and then add the extras to make it fun. Test each other’s games. Earn the Coding for Good Digital Game Design badge (Badges not provided). Attend as many sessions as needed to complete your game. The class fills requirements for Junior and Cadette Girl Scout badges.

Basic Coding (Grades 3-6, Online or In-person): Create animations, stories and computer games. Learn the secrets of computer programming and have fun every step of the way. Scratch is a kid-friendly, open-source, popular language developed by MIT’s Media Lab. Dream up, design and program cool interactive scenes, like a zoo with your choice of animals or a race track with your choice of car and trucks. Build interactive cartoons, invitations, greeting cards and even add sounds or your own voice and pictures to the projects you design. This class fills requirements for Brownies and Junior Girl Scout badges (Badges not provided).

Beginning Robotics (Grade 3 minimum, In-person only): Learn to program your robot to travel to faraway places; add sounds and lights to make a unique journey. This class completes all steps for the Programming Robots badge (Badges not provided).

Program Goals

Overview

Girls Engage Technology provides small groups of young girls with hands-on all-girls engineering experiences. Classes are taught by female engineers.

Provide a positive programming experience

EVERY girl completes a program that she is proud of and shares with the group.
Programs must contain specific coding structures, but the girl selects the theme and implementation so that the final product is unique and reflects her choices.

Measure an increase in confidence, based on competence, so they are willing to take the next step.

GET girls have >95% response to "I would like to take another class".
All girls are introduced to activities that they can continue at home.

Testimonial

“It was wonderful to see girls who may have started off thinking they don’t like computers, or saying they haven’t had success with circuits in the past, engaging in meaningful ways with the lessons. They focused, they tried and tried again, and then succeeded. I love the fact that with Barbara’s program, we were able to give these girls the opportunity to see themselves as successful in ways they might not have before.” - Girl Scout Troop Leader

"My friend Mark, he's a boy, said that I couldn't learn Scratch, but I just did." - Coral age 10

"I had no idea she would enjoy this." - Mother of 11-year old girl.

Program Outcomes

Barbara Miner, PhD retires as GET Coordinator after 8 years!

Barbara started with Saturday Academy as an SVP Encore fellow following retirement from a 25-year engineering career at Intel. As one of the few “technical females” working in process development, she managed an electron microscopy lab that analyzed the atomic arrangement and composition of newly invented materials for next-generation microprocessors. Her passion is to bring more girls into technical fields. In 2015, she began the Girls Engage Technology program in the interest of exciting young girls in the areas of computer science and engineering. As an SA instructor she has taught electron microscopy and Scratch programming and has built water rocket launchers, hovercrafts and Rube Goldberg devices with hundreds of girls. From Summer of 2013 to Spring 2021 she taught 2,933 students! Her passion for increasing the confidence of young girls in their technological skills through demonstrated competence continues through GET and our SA2U classes.