For Blue Mountain Girls, "The Sky's the Limit"

On Saturday, March 21st, 21 young women from Blue Mountain Middle School’s 7th grade headed to the Bronx to attend the 12th Annual Explore Your Opportunities – The Sky’s The Limit Conference at the College of Mount Saint Vincent. This conference, organized by the American Association of University Women (AAUW Westchester Branch and AAUW Empire State Virtual Branch), offers a hands-on approach to exploration of careers in the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) to 7th-grade girls in New York City and Westchester.

Some of the activities included writing code in HTML and JavaScript to create websites and games; learning about origami; analyzing the attributes of flowers; designing toys for animals; and creating cosmetics; as well as meeting 19 different “mystery women” with varying levels of education and work experience in the STEM arena. In scavenger-hunt style, the girls were able to walk around and interview the women in order to match them to their biographies.

The keynote speaker was the GPS Girl – Karen Jacobsen – the voice you may know on your iPhone as Siri when you select English-Australian. Karen provided the girls with some interesting advice: five key features of being able to “recalculate” our own inner GPS. She also explained how her voice was recorded in thousands of syllables to create the GPS talking voices that we hear.

All 7th-grade girls were offered the opportunity to participate, and although each school was only offered 18 spots, BMMS was generously allotted more spots to accommodate all of the girls who were interested in attending. Admission for the girls was sponsored by the BMMS Student Organization and faculty member Beth Gagné coordinated the registration process, along with the help of some 7th-grade teachers.

The Hendrick Hudson School District has a strong commitment to the STEM areas of study, from grades k through 12. For example, through Hen Hud’s Project Lead the Way program, high school students are exposed to rigorous course material with real-world applications. Hen Hud Superintendent Joseph Hochreiter noted, “Our District is focused on becoming a leader in the kind of hands-on, real-life learning that will give our students a distinct advantage when they move on to college and the working world.”

“Thank You to Superintendent Hochreiter, Resource Development Liaison Beth Gruber, and Principal John Owens for identifying this great opportunity for our students,” Ms. Gagné said.

Photo (left to right): Front – Rebecca Stratton; 2nd Row – Dana Ho, Julieta Casuriaga, Kristen Blaney, Jessica O’Reilly, Megan Rivera, Kate Doorley; 3rd row – Samantha Mager, Caitlin Weimar, Isabel Begun, Helen Jacobson, Olivia Doorley, Nyssa Notrica, Abigail Lustyik, Amandine Tirino; Back – Jillian Attinelly, Sydney Cowperthwait, Gwenevere Vargo, Tulip Osorio;
Not pictured – Kaylah Harrington and Izabel Ziemba