GIRL POWER

ALTHOUGH IT'S NOT WIDELY KNOWN OUTSIDE THE ORGANIZATION, THE GIRL SCOUTS HAVE ALL SORTS OF PROGRAMS DESIGNED TO ATTRACT GIRLS TO ENGINEERING AND SCIENCE.

What does it take to be an engineer? On PBS's new "Design Squad" TV show, scheduled to debut this month, eight teenagers discover it takes teamwork, some creative thinking, a little money, a few power tools-and lots of peanut butter.

In one episode, the red team competes against the blue team in an effort to build a machine that will make as many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as possible. "We have to think of something that will have this motion," one girl says, opening and closing her hands like two pieces of bread. "Who says a sandwich has to be two slices of bread?" asks another in a brainstorming session with her team.

By the end of the day, the teams' machines appear to make more of a mess than appetizing PB&J's, but the conveyor belts, peanut butter-dispensing funnels and bread-folding gizmos have given these teens a firsthand try at engineering.

The red and blue teams might not have been wearing green Girl Scout uniforms, but Girl Scouts of the USA is one of the organizations supporting this new engineering show, produced by WGBH Boston. For almost 100 years, the organization, which is doing outreach for "Design Squad," has been encouraging girls to explore engineering, science and math. The Girl Scouts was founded in 1912, and by 1913, members were earning Electrician badges and Flyer-later renamed Aviation-badges. By the 1980s, there were badges in Computer Fun; today, it's Aerospace and Discovering Technology.

Supporting the TV show is just one of the many ways Girl Scouts is encouraging its young female members-in all levels from Daisies up through Senior Girl Scouts-to embrace a career path that's traditionally underrepresented by women. Over the past two years, more than 8.6 million Girl Scout STEM-related (science, technology, engineering and math) earned recognitions (badges, etc.) have been sold. With just under 3 million members in the organization, that means almost every girl is participating in a STEM-related activity.

That's no coincidence. "Girls are not coming out of school and studying engineering," says Ruthe Farmer, project manager of technology and engineering education for the Girl Scouts. "We can fill this gap for girls by providing them with additional STEM opportunities beyond school in an all-girl environment where they're getting female role models and they're not competing with boys for attention from the teacher."

One of the biggest ways the organization is introducing engineering to girls is through a program called "Fair Play: Design & Discovery." Started in 2001, Fair Play offers girls in 54 councils across 28 states a chance to take part in residential or day camps, leadership institutes and after-school programs. While the themes and topics vary, Fair Play programs follow a curriculum of engineering fundamentals, hands-on activities and project-based learning in a girl-focused environment. Each of the programs culminates with the girls designing an engineering solution for a problem in their own lives. These are no make-believe solutions, either-some girls are pursuing patents for their projects.

This past summer, Kelly Baron, 14, of Byram Township, N.J., headed out to Oregon for two weeks to take part in a Fair Play program called "Design & Discovery Destination." Baron and the other girls learned about the different disciplines of engineering and the careers they could lead to. They took apart old alarm clocks, designed improved, user-friendly phone booths and took field trips, shadowing engineers at Intel and visiting the Tillamook Cheese Factory-a favorite of Baron's. "We looked at the machinery and saw how important efficiency and layout was-and then we got ice cream," she says.

The best part of the camp, Baron says, was when she and the other Girl Scouts got to choose real-life problems and design their own engineering solutions, which they later presented to an audience of engineers at Intel. Baron, who was tired of soggy lunches and broken paper bags caused by sweaty ice packs, developed a condensation-free ice pack, which she's still perfecting at home with her dad. "After I can work out the kinks, I hope to get a patent," she says.

The part that Courtney Nash, 15, of Muskegon, Mich., liked best about the two-week program was shadowing an engineer at Intel. At lunch, she and her mentor talked about what engineers do at Intel and how they do it, and then Nash sat in on a conference call to India. "It was just kind of like whoa, they talk to people all around the world to figure this one problem out," she says. "It was neat to see it in action instead of being in a class hearing about it."

Made possible through grants from Intel and the U.S. Department of Education, these Fair Play programs are aimed at showing girls ages 12 to 16 how a career in engineering or technology can be both attainable and fun. They range in price from free to $250, but scholarships are always available, and Farmer says no girl is turned away for lack of money. The programs are open to all girls; non-Girl Scout members pay the $10 yearly membership fee to participate.