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Cal State Fullerton Teams Up With Girl Scouts of Orange County for STEM Expo

400 Girl Scouts to Learn About Science, Technology, Engineering and Math
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Cal State Fullerton and the Girl Scouts of Orange County are partnering for the fourth year to present the annual STEM Expo on Sunday, Nov. 17, at CSUF’s Titan Student Union Portola Pavilion.

CSUF engineering and computer science students and faculty members from biological science, chemistry, computer science, engineering, mathematics and physics will share engaging activities and demonstrations with about 400 Girl Scouts in fourth through eighth grades.

“This event is designed to encourage more females to pursue science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) college majors and to develop the next generation of female leaders in STEM fields,” said Doina Bein, associate professor of computer science.

Girl Scouts will explore the exciting world of STEM through such hands-on activities as coding rovers, solving cybersecurity issues, and learning about video game design and objective detection systems — computer technology that relates to computer vision and image processing.

CSUF’s Association for Computing Machinery-Women in Computing student chapter is the lead organizer of the expo, which is not open to the public, and partners with the Girl Scouts of Orange County’s STEM Patrol.

“By partnering with the Girl Scouts of Orange County, it gives young women the opportunity to be exposed to STEM, which is a predominantly male-dominated field,” said computer science major Janeen Yamak, president of the student club, which has about 50 female members. “We don’t want these girls to be afraid to pursue a career in STEM and we show them that women in STEM is growing.”

About 15 CSUF student organizations and more than 40 companies are participating to help broaden the Girl Scouts’ interests in STEM, Yamak said. The Titan Rover, in which CSUF students, for a collegiate competition, design and build the next generation of Mars rovers that will one day work alongside human explorers in the field, also will be on display.

Industry partners, including Amigos De Bolsa Chica, Magikid Robotics Lab, Northrop Grumman, Orange County Department of Education and Project Scientist, also will share activities with participating Girl Scouts. Additionally, Girl Scouts will have the opportunity to earn STEM-related badges.

The event is made possible by Ericsson, a multinational networking and telecommunications company, members of the Girl Scouts of Orange County STEM Consortium and CSUF’s College of Engineering and Computer Science.

For more information contact Doina Bein, associate professor of computer science, dbein@fullerton.edu; or Beth Harnick-Shapiro, lecturer in computer science, beth.harnick.shapiro@fullerton.edu.