A building experience for these Scouts
Company offers girls a chance to create structures
Three Girl Scout Brownies huddled around a structure they had just created Saturday morning at the Suffolk Construction Co.’s Boston headquarters.
Their building was made of uncooked spaghetti, marshmallows, and brightly colored masking tape.
And as sometimes happens in construction, there were obstacles.
A piece of the pasta foundation fell onto the table, prompting Emily Hislop, 9, to look around at the other scouts, troop leaders, and Suffolk staff and exclaim, “You didn’t see that!”
Hislop, Clare Lonardo-Roy, 9, and Sophia Kelley, 8, belong to Braintree’s Girl Scout Troop 83301, one of four troops participating in the “Brownies Who Build” program launch day.
The project, launched by Suffolk and the Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts, aims to introduce 7- to 9-year-old girls to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), as well as potential construction careers, according to Betsy Calkins, director of programs for the Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts.
“We do a lot of STEM programming and this is a great piece of that,” Calkins said. “Especially at this young age, if [the girls] already start thinking that STEM is for them, then that helps combat all of those other messages that they get from the world.”
The new Brownie program launched during Women’s History Month, as well as Women in Construction Week, and comes as an expansion to “Juniors Who Build,” a program launched in 2023 to help Girl Scouts ages 9 to 11 apply STEM lessons, as well, according to a statement from the Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts.
Katherine Maloney, Suffolk’s director of corporate giving, said the company designed a curriculum to guide the Brownies through designing a hypothetical school building. She said Suffolk also participates in various Girl Scouts events, including a STEM festival in April.
Suffolk staff led the scouts on tours throughout the Roxbury headquarters, where they were able to ask employees questions about their careers and get a look at where construction project planning takes place.
The troops included girls from Newton, Malden, Braintree, and Wakefield.
One of the girls’ favorite stops on the tour was the candy station — a wall of clear tubes holding sweet and savory snacks that Suffolk employees are able to take from throughout the workday.
“I would’ve died to take this and put it in my house,” Hislop said. “I would put it in my room and then, I wouldn’t let my brother have any.”
After the tours, Maloney prompted the girls to begin the spaghetti-and-marshmallow building activity inside one of the company’s boardrooms.
Maloney told the girls to create towers that were strong enough to hold a marshmallow at the top.
“I know you probably think a marshmallow feels pretty light, but it is a challenge to try and get it to stay up,” Maloney said to the Girl Scouts.
“I can,” Sydney Boettcher, 8, from Troop 83417 in Wakefield, exclaimed after listening to instructions.
Inside the boardroom, MaryCate Spears, 8, also from Wakefield’s Troop 83417, said she was thrilled to learn about the Suffolk Construction Co. because she’d like to be an engineer when she grows up.
“I hope [our troop] goes to a construction site,” the Brownie said after putting a marshmallow on top of her team’s spaghetti structure. “I liked seeing the steps of how to build.”
Rose Libby, 9, who completed the tower with Spears, wants to be a paleontologist when she gets older, but still found the Suffolk tour fun, she said.
She raved about being a part of the Girl Scouts program, saying she “has enough cookies to last the next few years.”
Boettcher, who counted 61 patches on the back of her Brownie vest, said that after spending a day at the Suffolk headquarters, she’d love to work at the company.
“Well, I wanted to work at a pet store and have an Arctic fox as a pet, but after seeing [Suffolk], I want to work here now,” Boettcher said after finishing her spaghetti tower.
Jen Boettcher, Sydney Boettcher’s mother and leader of Troop 83417, said the programs introduces STEM subjects to young girls in an exciting way.
“It’s great for the girls to get creative, to see something outside of our town, and to see women in construction and other roles that they might not usually see,” Jen Boettcher said in an interview after the event.