NASA “SISTER” Program Empowers Girls to Enter into STEM Fields
Despite the election of an African-American president and nearly 10 years into the 21st Century, some old ideas and myths about women continue. The idea that somehow science, engineering, technology, and math are areas reserved for males still persists in some people’s minds, even the minds of some women and young girls.
Fortunately many people are moving past those outdated myths and opening the doors to rewarding careers in the STEM fields through girl power and the Summer Institute in Science, Technology, Engineering and Research better known as the SISTER Program at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
According to the program’s director Terri Patterson, SISTER “started maybe 20 years ago with a group of women that worked at the Goddard space flight center who decided to get together because they wanted to do something for the girls and they came out of human resources, science areas and the equal opportunity office.”
Since that time SISTER has brought together at least 20 girls each summer for a week for the purpose of increasing the awareness of and providing opportunities for middle school girls to explore non-traditional career fields with research scientists, mathematicians and engineers.
“We get scientists, (and) engineers and they come in and do different projects and different experiments,” said Patterson. “We have Dr. Aprille Ericsson-Jackson (an aerospace engineer) that comes in and builds rockets with them and they launch their rockets. Then we have another lady that comes in Dr. Betsy Pugel and she does the liquid nitrogen program with girls and for the last two years we’ve been working with Lehigh a college in New Jersey. So, we do an experiment with them and use video teleconferencing with them.”
The program is held during the fourth week of June and is free to all participants. Applicants must be in the 7th or 8th grade and have at least a B average in math and/or science. It’s not a residential program, so applicants and parents are responsible for their own accommodations, but the program is open to young women from anywhere. A lot of the participants come from the Maryland and Greater Washington, D.C. area but they also draw participants from other states including New York and North Carolina.
For Patterson the great part of the program is seeing the young women going on to careers in science, engineering, technology or math and watching them return as role models. “For the last eight years, I’ve been running the program,” said Patterson (and) “its been very rewarding to see the girls as they get older and the many girls that are in the science and math fields,” she said.
For additional information, contact Terri Patterson, Office of Higher Education 301-286-4398 or Marion Carson, Equal Opportunity Program Office (301) 286-0628