In order to inform European participants in the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program about increasing inclusivity in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, or STEM, four North Carolina girls and the sizable robot they built visited the Pentagon last week.
At the 2023 FIRST Robotics Competition world championship in Houston, the 12-member, all-female G-Force robotics team was named the Rookie All Star champions. With 620 advanced to the world championship, nearly 3,500 high school teams from around the globe competed.  , ++
One of the 1,185 robotics teams supported by the Defense Department and business worldwide is G-Force Robotics. Only 2 % of teams in grades K through 12 are made up entirely of female competitors, out of more than 86 000.  , ++
The G-Force team’s coach, Air Force Lt. Col. Shannon Mann, stated that the goal of the team is to encourage and inspire girls to participate in science, technology, engineering, and math at all levels and to assist them in pursuing their career goals, whether through DOD, other U.S. government agencies, industry, or whatever else they choose.  , ++
Mann claimed that in a short amount of time, the girls have experienced incredible success. ” These girls did n’t know how to use power tools, program in Java, or create robots until a little over the past year.” Together, they constructed their winning robot for a competition in about eight weeks. These girls might travel to Mars in twenty years. She claimed that they might serve as the leaders who deter our next global foe.  , ++
Mann claimed that the team completed 3,200 hours of volunteer work, mostly devoted to STEM outreach in their communities, in addition to creating the winning robot.  , ++
The team discussed their outreach initiatives with the IVLP participants, including a career-focused breakfast for high school girls with female, STEM industry leaders, an initiative to donate books and read to elementary school students, partnerships with their neighborhood libraries, and STEM classes for middle-school girls.  , ++
The girls also discussed G-Force Robotics ‘ experiences as a DOD-affiliated exhibitor at Charlotte Motor Speedway in Charlotte, North Carolina’s Fall STEAM Expo. Science, technology, engineering, the arts, and math are all referred to as STEAM, while the term “arts” refers to the fine arts that foster innovation and creativity.  , ++
The team has strong ties to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base and the 4th Fighter Wing in North Carolina in addition to being sponsored by the department’s STEM experts, known as DoDSTEM. The team helped plan and host the first STEM Hangar at the Wings Over Wayne Air Show in May for 62, 000 attendees, hosted two” Aviation &, Robotics Day” events for about 300 participants, and took part in a sizable Project Quesada event in 2022 with 600 students.  ,
The girls met female pilots, other aviators, and STEM-focused airmen at Seymour, where they talked about their jobs and opportunities in the Air Force and other services.  , ++
The G-Force team members received a lot of questions from IVLP participants. The girls were questioned about their motivations for joining the robotics team by Neda Zutautaite, executive director of the nongovernmental Knowledge Economy Forum in Vilnius, Lithuania.  , ++
A 10th grader named Claire Fendrick, who has spent the last two years studying robotics, recalled reading about a young woman who desired to go into space.  , ++
That, according to Fendrick, made her consider the numerous “really cool” job opportunities. Then, after reading online about the formation of an all-female robotics team, I simply decided to give it a shot. It was delicious when I tried it. And I’ve gained a lot of knowledge.  , ++
Sloan Mann, a 10th-grader with six years of experience in robotics, claimed that she was initially the only girl on the middle school robots team before being told to stop creating posters and coding in favor of creating judging materials. In order to improve her technical abilities and assist other girls with theirs, she formed an all-girl robotics team.  , ++
The team was asked if they had ever tried to recruit other girls to join them by Yelizaveta Korenko, the head of STEM at FEM, a nongovernmental organization that sets up initiatives to motivate young women in STEM fields in Ukraine.  , ++
I spoke with friends, Fendrick said. Oh, that’s so cool, everyone is saying. The second response they make is,” I could never do that.”  , ++
She continued,” We need to demonstrate to girls that anything is possible.  , ++