Oregon club boosts confidence of tech girls

EUGENE, Ore. (AP) — At Ophelia's Place in Eugene, five girls sit in front of laptops on a Tuesday afternoon, brainstorming ideas on games they could program. Behind them, technology guru Max Skorodinsky shows them an example of what they can do by projecting a "Magic Eight Ball" simulator game on a screen, and inviting the girls to ask questions for various automated answers.

One girl has Skorodinsky ask the simulated response program if it is a fan of the boy band One Direction. An answer of "Never" spits out, to general reaction of laughter.

The Girls Technology, Empowerment and Confidence Club, informally referred to as G-TEC, is only a month into its inaugural year. Believed by Skorodinsky and others to be the first of its kind in Eugene, the club's goal is to bring together girls between the ages of 10 and 18, and give them a distinctive edge in tinkering with computer hardware, software, Web design, programming and other facets of a rapidly growing technology field.

The club arrives at a time when the gap between women and men in STEM disciplines — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — remains stubbornly disparate. According to the latest annual statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor, women make up 47 percent of the total U.S. workforce — but only 7 percent to 39 percent in various STEM fields. Some of the greatest disparities can be found in areas of technology, with women comprising, for example, only 8.3 percent of those employed in electronics and electronics engineering fields.

G-TEC seeks to confront those statistics at a ground level: through technology empowerment.

"In today's society, younger boys are usually exposed to more technology," said Skorodinsky. "There are a lot of things marketed to boys — Legos, games — that increase their confidence that they might go into these fields."

Skorodinsky, who is volunteering his time to lead G-TEC, worries that girls aren't receiving the same initial encouragement.

"The subject matter itself isn't prevalent in schools, and when it is, I expect to see girls come with less confidence," said Skorodinsky, who has taught technology classes at several local schools, including Springfield's Hamlin Middle School.

Skorodinsky graduated from the University of Oregon in 2003 and has been involved in the local tech scene ever since. He worked as a senior systems and reports analyst at Symantec in Springfield, then moved on to a software and Web development position at Concentric Sky Inc. in Eugene.

This summer, he helped teach a week-long girls' technology camp offered through Ophelia's Place, a Eugene nonprofit group that advocates for girls and young women.

While at the camp, Skorodinsky overheard two girls talk about how their school's robotics club seemed more geared toward boys than girls.

"They were saying the whole club was based on racing robots," Skorodinsky said. "They wanted to do different things with the programming, but they didn't have the opportunity."

After the summer camp, 15 people from tech industries and tech education programs, including representatives from the University of Oregon and Symantec, came together to discuss how to continue getting more girls involved in STEM fields.

Three girls from the summer camp also were present, and they broached the idea of starting a weekly technology group for girls. Skorodinsky pitched the idea to Ophelia's Place program coordinator River Aaland, and, upon receiving approval, began planning for the group. Ophelia's Place is underwriting the program's modest costs, and also providing space for the girls to meet.

Seven girls registered prior to the club's first meeting last month, and a half-dozen laptops were immediately made available, donated by Symantec to assist the girls in their initial programming attempts.

At their weekly meetings since, the girls have learned about basic programming concepts using a free programming language, Scratch, created by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Some of the girls already have ideas they want to pursue.

Shanti Morrell, 14, is keen to take things to the next step.

"I want to learn Python or Java," she said, adding, "It might be nice to go into tech."

Shanti expresses excitement about the class' possibilities. "I was interested in technology before," she said. "But I was looking things up on the Internet, and that was hard."

Isabella Zander, a 13-year-old who attends Roosevelt Middle School, is another weekly regular. She said she stumbled across a brochure about the club, and now finds herself planning how to create a looping plot line game with Scratch.

Celeste Yager-Kandl, Ophelia's skills-building coordinator, says the program isn't intended just for girls already interested in STEM fields.

"We also want to invite girls who maybe weren't interested in technology, and provide a space for them where they don't get talked over," Yager-Kandl said.

If interest persists, she and Skorodinsky hope to see the club continue and grow into next year and beyond. Before the current club sessions expire in mid-December, they hope to bring in several women from local STEM industries to encourage the girls.

Eugene program development consultant and K-12 consultant Jane Krauss, a program development consultant with the National Center for Women and Information Technology, has promised to come show the girls the programmable Finch robot, which is designed for computer science education in grades K-12, using more than a dozen common programming languages.

G-TEC also is in contact with the UO Computer Science Department, and soliciting presentations with speakers from the department's Women in Computer Science group.

If all goes well, G-TEC will become a yearly program, inspiring girls little by little to test out their tech mettle.

"There are so many possibilities for the future," Yager-Kandl said.

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Information from: The Register-Guard, http://www.registerguard.com

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