GLAMS shows girls possibilities of STEM
The El Dorado Conference Center was abuzz Friday with 101 local sixth-graders eager to learn the ways science, math and engineering can be practically applied.
Girls Learning About Math and Science (GLAMS) returned for the first time since 2019 starting Friday morning and girls from local schools including Washington Middle School, Parkers Chapel, Strong-Huttig, Smackover-Norphlet, West Side Christian School and home-schooled students were grouped randomly into teams to take part in a variety of exercises, workshops and activities.
Christy Wilson, director of institutional effectiveness and research at SouthArk and chair of the GLAMS committee, said that 106 volunteers took part in the event along with the 101 students.
Wilson said that GLAMS began in 2011, long ago enough that previous participants have returned as adults to describe how the event ignited an interest that led to careers in STEM.
GLAMS committee member and one of the founders of the event, Alice Mahony, said that she personally knew two women who had the event “change their attitude” towards STEM subjects; both went on to attend Louisiana Tech and eventually become engineers at Lockheed Martin.
Mahony recalled when a group of men from a local plant came to give demonstrations at a GLAMS conference years ago and mentioned they had given similar demonstrations for young men but had never considered it for girls. GLAMS is, at core, an attempt to remedy that.
One previous GLAMS participant, Parkers Chapel High School graduate Stinson Battisto, served as a volunteer on Friday.
Battisto currently attends South Arkansas University and is studying to become a middle school teacher in STEM subjects.
“[GLAMS] made me realize that I wanted to do something in STEM,” Battisto said.
The girls being randomly grouped with students from other schools, she added, helps to break them from everyday routine and social worries and to explore the subjects with more enthusiasm.
“There’s an opportunity to put themselves out there more… to see if they like it, if it’s something they want to do or if it’s something they’re indifferent to,” Battisto said.
Shortly after lunch on Friday, the teams were taking on an activity that required them to modify a remote con
trolled car for each of four different, obstacle strewn tracks with the goal of completing certain activities on each track.
El Dorado School District science chair Carolyn Smith helped to organize the activity, which kicked off with a showing of the music video for “Needing/ Getting” by the band OK Go. The video depicts a modified car being used to play different musical instruments, helping to hype the students up for the workshop.
Representatives from local industry also attended to give demonstrations, including four workers from Clean Harbors.
Clean Harbors facility operations manager Valerie Goodwin, who attended along with Lori Goodwin, Stacey Stevens and Maya McGeary, said that their demonstration was a hit with the students.
“We did it on chemical reactions… a small scale chemical reaction, versus the large scale chemical reaction you might see at Clean Harbors. We wanted to do something small and did elephant paste, to show you can use common household chemicals and have reactions,” Valerie Goodwin said.
Elephant toothpaste is made, according to Scientific American, with materials including yeast, hydrogen peroxide and warm water.
“They enjoyed it — their eyes were big and they were amazed by it… The majority had never seen anything like it,” she added.
The teams, with names like Team Chemistry and Team Hydrology, spent time at their tables working collaboratively on their cars before trying them out on the tracks, which contained challenges ranging from picking up fuzzy balls to using a pulley system.
“[The activity] teaches that it’s ok to fail, to just keep going and going,” Smith said.