The holidays are right around the corner, and gingerbread house construction is underway at the Boys & Girls Club of Larimer County.
No graham crackers or gumdrops in this workshop; these girls are learning real carpentry skills – complete with power tools – along with a healthy dose of fractions and geometry. It’s a typical class in Fort Collins-based GEMS – Girls in Engineering, Math and Science.
Colorado State University’s Construction Management Program plays an integral role in the GEMS annual holiday project, contributing both the use of the campus workshop and equipment as well as students to pre-cut the wooden components and then attend in person with the GEMS girls for assembly guidance.
‘Powerful motivator’
“There is no substitute for the girls working shoulder-to-shoulder with Construction Management students,” said Leslie Patterson, GEMS founder and CSU School of Education Ph.D. student. “Our girls seeing female Construction Management volunteers pursuing traditionally non-female-related careers is truly a powerful motivator.”
GEMS promotes women in STEM academics and careers by offering resources for young female students, primarily minority and low-income. Success begins with a feeling of capability and confidence, and GEMS classes give girls a sense of accomplishment around STEM subjects, increasing the likelihood that they will enter and excel in STEM fields.
This is the third year that students from CSU’s Department of Construction Management have volunteered to help create the wooden gingerbread kits for GEMS as well as participate in the actual building of the houses.
“I love working with the kids,” said Sherona Simpson, an instructor in Construction Management. “There are so many teachable moments with them. And the lesson is usually for us, the adults.”
Anna Fontana, internship and outreach coordinator in Construction Management, has also brought in industry partners to help with the gingerbread house construction. For the second year, Conduct All Electric, a local electrical contracting firm, is providing lights for the gingerbread houses as well as a lesson on electricity.
GEMS flourishes under the corporate support of Integrated MEP, LLC, a Fort Collins-based mechanical engineering, electrical and plumbing design firm, where partner Patterson is deeply committed to hiring diversity, recognizing that the talent pipeline starts with elementary school girls. GEMS is a program under the umbrella of a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization The Quarter Project, founded by Patterson in 2015. It was named for the earning disparity of women in the U.S., who at that time were earning roughly 75 cents for every dollar earned by a white male. As of the 2018 U.S. Census, Hispanic women earned only 54 cents on the white male dollar – that’s the gap targeted by the GEMS program.
Steady expansion
GEMS has grown steadily since its inception in 2015. From its initial start, serving 10 girls once a month at Putnam Elementary with only Patterson and a revolving door of volunteers, GEMS has expanded to seven locations throughout Larimer County, with 107 girls currently enrolled in weekly programs.
Locations include the Fort Collins Boys & Girls Club, the Loveland Pulliam Boys & Girls Club, Garfield Elementary Boys & Girls Club, the Harmony Village Boys & Girls Club, the Academy of Arts and Knowledge, University Village at CSU and Lesher Middle School, where GEMS co-leads the “Girls Who Code” program.
In addition to an expanded curriculum that includes pneumatics, solar energy, electricity and magnetism, engineering design, bridge-building, physics and even rocketry, this year it fundraised scholarships for a record 20 girls to attend STEM-X Institute, Poudre School District’s popular week-long summer STEM camp.
Runeela Taskeen, a recent graduate of the School of Education’s Equity, Education and Transformation doctoral program, has joined as executive director, expanding the organization’s reach even further, including a leadership development program for high school girls at area high schools, in a program dubbed “STEM Femmes.”
“The enthusiasm these girls bring is immediate and overpowering – I’ve already been cajoled into adding an additional program into this already full semester, a visit to the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery, by a group unwilling to take no for an answer,” said GEMS Program Director Emma Holloway, a CSU chemical and biomedical engineering student.
GEMS also benefits from the partnership with Alpha Sigma Kappa, the women in technical studies sorority at Colorado State University, which provides both instruction and mentorship.
For more information, visit The Quarter Project of Northern Colorado’s website.
