Excite Camp

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Excite Camp

Excite Camp has ran successfully for the last fifteen years on Maui.  Keeping with the Women in Technology (WIT) mission, the purpose of Excite Camp is to expose and encourage our young females into science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers through hands on activities and site visits that deals with STEM first hand. In addition to the learning experience, WIT believes it is important for the girls to see the connection between our cultural heritage and scientific technology.

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Students Reach for the HI STARs

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The recent Mini HI STAR (Hawaii Student/Teacher Research) Program of the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy, IfA, was sponsored by Maui Economic Development Board and Air Force Research Laboratory. The program provided 11 high school students from Maui and Molokai with four days of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education. The IFA curriculum gave these students the necessary research skills and background to conduct original research projects.

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Dr. JD Armstrong, Maui Technology Education and Outreach Specialist at IFA, and teachers, led the students in morning physics and astronomy lectures. Afternoon sessions included the measurement of the positions and brightness of objects in space using image processing and photometric techniques. “We delivered the basic content in talks with PowerPoint® slides that instructed the students on selecting the celestial object they wanted to research for their group presentations,” said Dr. Armstrong. Students observed the sky as it is seen from different parts of the earth remotely via the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network. “Access to world-class research equipment offered the participants live views of outer space beamed straight to their computers,” Dr. Armstrong explained. “They were able to analyze the results of the collected image data by processing images with Astrometrica, a software tool that calculates precise positions of the celestial bodies.”

“The HI STAR program experience has helped broaden my knowledge on various astronomy topics,” said Celeste Jongeneelen, a home-schooled 10th grader. “We got to research exoplanets, asteroids and comets, young stellar objects and double stars!” Jongeneelen’s group presented a talk entitled Photometry Analysis of Two Young Open Star Clusters. Their objective was to identify candidate hydrogen disk stars. “Images of two young open star clusters were taken with red, infrared and H-alpha filters,” she explained. “We did the photometry on these images and made color-color charts. If any outliers showed excess in H-alpha in the charts, those are the potential disk stars. Our results showed a few candidate disk stars,” Jongeneelen added. “However, further analysis is needed to confirm these candidates.”

Press Release Article:
http://www.focusmauinui.com/?p=2970

Girl Scouts Make Their Own Superhero

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Women in Technology (WIT) and Girl Scouts joined together to promote STEM careers. On August 15th, not only did the 25 young girls meet a gardener, a nurse, and a pilot but also two programmers, Kelli Borgonia from Goma Games and Joelle Torneros from DevLeague. Along with WIT, Kelli and Joelle helped promote coding by having the Girl Scouts create their very own superhero story!

New STEMworks program more than an after-school science club

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New STEMworks program more than an after-school science club

MEDB’s Women in Technology has announced a fun, new STEMworks AFTERschool Program for the 2015-16 academic year aimed at middle-school boys and girls, grades 6, 7 and 8.

The program addresses the need to stimulate interest and skills in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education and apply it to real world issues. It hopes to nurture student interest throughout their high school and post-secondary education, in order to prepare them to meet the 21st century workforce needs of their communities.

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The astronomers are coming for our children

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The astronomers are coming for our children

Hawaii is hosting the largest meeting of professional astronomers in the world later this year. Although the 29th General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union is more than 50 days away, the group is already extending an invitation to local schools to take part in some world-class science education programs.

The IAU has been around since 1919, but most people aren’t familiar with it. But many people are familiar with its controversial decision in 2006 to demote Pluto from planet status, which has been debated in both scientific and pop culture terms ever since (including a 2014 debate on the topic at Harvard, which ended with a popular vote saying Pluto is a planet anyway).

Suffice it to say, for better or worse, most of the work that goes on at the General Assembly doesn’t make headlines (nor start schoolyard fights).

The decision to bring the IAU to Hawaii was a big deal, in part because the General Assembly is only held every three years. The announcement was made in 2009, with Hawaii prevailing “against very strong competition from two other sites.”

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