St. Cloud Area Girls Getting A Hands On Introduction To A STEM Career

ST CLOUD - St. Cloud State University and Tech Savvy are opening doors to make sure young women know they can enter the STEM fields.

Tech Savvy is an event hosted around the country throughout the year. The event is designed to introduce young girls, and their parents, to the possibility of a career in mathematics, engineering, science, and technology.

There are a lot of fun hands on workshops that are run by women in the STEM fields.

Melissa Hanzsek-Brill, an associate professor of mathematics at SCSU, says the girls are able to creatively interact at each workshop.

"They get to go into the visualization lab on campus which has a 3D scanner, virtual reality headsets, touchscreens and they are going to get to interact with the technology through science."

The event is open to girls in grades six through nine. Hanzsek-Brill says this age group is the focus since it's the age when most young girls start to develop an idea of what they want to do in their life.

The event is also important for the girls parents. The parents have workshops designed to help them support their daughters as they pursue a career in the STEM field.

Tech Savvy is sponsored by the American Association of University Women. The event runs all day Saturday from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the Integrated Science Engineering Laboratory Facility at SCSU.