The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
STEAM camps geared toward girls
Manufacturing camp is for girls
Lorain County Community College is hosting a five-day manufacturing camp where girls will have the opportunity to combine practical skills with art and creativity in addition to the FireFish STEAM Academy.
The camps are both pilot programs for the Summer of Making through LCCC’s Patsie C. and Dolores Jenee Campana Center for Ideation and Invention in partnership with LCCC’s “College for Kids” and FireFish.
The five-day camp called “Rosie’s Girls” where 25 youngsters are learning about non traditional careers in a collaboration with experts from different fields.
The first day of the camp had students in LCCC’s redesigned Fab Lab designing and building wooden butterflies before re-convening to the iLoft building where they took part in journal and reflection exercises facilitated by illustrator and former journalist Karen Sandstrom.
Joan Perch, program and outreach coordinator for the Campana Center, said the students were reflecting on what it means to be empowered women.
“The idea is that girls are learning non traditional skills even though we do have women in all science fields,” Perch said. “Women are still very underrepresented in most of them.
“In a safe girl friendly environment, we are providing them with opportunities to learn new things.”
The program is a partnership with LCCC and Hard Hatted Women, Fire Fish Arts and LCCC’s “College for Kids.”
The camp also was organized with help from U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, whose office began organizing similar camps around the state in 2013, with 18 camps running this year.
Perch added with this being a pilot year for the programs they are hoping to expand on them next year in order to include more offerings for youth in Lorain County. Other partners include Lorain City Schools, Save Our Children Elyria, Lorain County Ohio Means Jobs, HHW Ohio and U.S. Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur with sponsorship from LCCC and Nordson Corporate Foundation.
“Ohioans are proud of our state’s long manufacturing history,” Brown said.
“To keep up that tradition, we must get a new generation interested in our changing manufacturing sector.
“That’s what these camps are all about. These camps are helping students around Ohio learn about manufacturing jobs right here in Ohio and the opportunities our manufacturing sector has created for their parents and grandparents.”
Perch added Brown’s support has been instrumental as a strong advocate of programs supporting the inclusion of women and girls in the trades and manufacturing technology where they have been traditionally underrepresented.
The Fire Fish STEAM Academy is a program for high school students running concurrently with “Rosie’s Girls.”
Students are working together to create the centerpiece
for the FireFish Festival on Oct. 6-7 in downtown Lorain, which is a giant STEAMpunk fish.
Under the creative energy and direction of founding festival artist Jim Gundlach, students have collaboratively designed and created the piece out of the temporary ideation center at LCCC’s Stocker Arts Center.
“What we are trying to do is get them to conceptualize things,” Gundlach said.
Elyria High School junior William Waddell is one of the students.
“The experience has been mysterious, not mysterious in a bad way, but mysterious in that you never know what you are going to do next,” William said.
“It is a very open space. I do come here a bit tired at first, but once I get going, I feel creative.”