STEPS Program Fosters Manufacturing, Engineering Aspirations in Female Students

A critical component of educating girls is building their self confidence. Historically, girls are not encouraged in the same ways as boys especially when it comes to a traditionally male academic pursuit – math and science.

The inspiring STEPS program founded at the University of Wisconsin at Stout answered that call a dozen years ago and is still going strong. STEPS stands for Science, Technology, and Engineering Preview summer camp. For four weeks each summer, 160 12-year-old girls spend five days in groups of 40 learning about electronics, physics, motors, metal casting and bending, plastics thermo-forming and how computers work. Each student pays $300 tuition (cost per student is $650) and disadvantaged youths, who make up a quarter of the group, attend for free. They all gain insight into the college campus at an early age.

For the past two years, campers have each built from scratch a radio-controlled speed boat which they race at the end of their stay in a brand-new manmade water course in a large lab. They built and flew radio-controlled airplanes in the program's first decade.

"We got sort of tired of the airplanes and the process is too sophisticated," says STEPS indefatigable program director and founder Peter Heimdahl. Officials do not recite how many campers eventually pursue engineering, but they have determined STEPS graduates are 9.5 times more likely to enter engineering than non-campers.

"We work with each instructor to make sure we meet the mission and that it's appropriate for girls 12 to 13. STEPS has got to be pedagogically correct," says Brenda Puck, Stout's STEPS activities director. "We want to make (STEPS) interesting and attractive to young women and give them role models and mentors."  

Heimdahl started it all born out of a different need – finding qualified female engineering instructors. Frustrated when he could not find them when he was associate dean at Stout, Heimdahl came up with the idea for the university to grow their own.  

"Pete is the pioneer. He put together the STEPS curriculum. (Students) learn the wonders of math, science and manufacturing and now they have been at it for 12 years," says Bart Aslin, director of the Society for Manufacturing Engineers (SME) Educational Foundation (SME-EF). SME liked the idea so much, it became the program's first sponsor and has since been joined by blue-blooded companies such as 3M, Caterpillar, Phillips Plastics, Ford, Alcoa and Target.

No one can explain the program's origins better than Heimdahl, who recently retired from Stout. Originally an Army field artilleryman, Heimdahl retired from West Point in 1992 as a Brigadier General where he headed the Civil and Mechanical Engineering Department. A follow-up email to this reporter's visit to the program drew this response:   

"We started a new Manufacturing Engineering program at Stout in 1994. We had to hire new engineering faculty as a result. We had several searches going on, and when I went to the chancellor with the lists of finalists, he didn't like them because there were no women in the pools. After a fruitless search for qualified women candidates, I finally made a deal with the chancellor that we would have to grow our own engineering faculty and start influencing them before they got into middle school. That was the beginning of STEPS."

Everyone celebrates when a STEPS camper pursues an engineering career, but there's a larger goal. "STEPS boosts their self-confidence so they can do anything in life," says Heimdahl. Indeed, the testimonials page at the STEPS website captures the intensity and transformational effects of the program.

Nora Perkoff from Richland, WI, was one young woman deeply influenced by STEPS. A year too old, she so badly wanted in the STEPS camp she fibbed about her age. "I cried when I graduated from STEPS because I did not want to leave," she says. After being a camper, she came back into the advanced STEPS program as a 15-year-old and served as a junior counselor. She served one summer as a lab assistant in the plastics activity and was elevated to the position of counselor of a ten-camper team this summer. She enrolled this fall at Stout as a student in the Manufacturing Engineering program.

The Stout program has been so successful, the SME Education Foundation replicated the model nationwide into Gateway Camps for elementary school students and Gateway Academies for both middle school boys and girls. There are 179 academies in 27 states involving 4,000 kids each summer with expansion plans to 250 Academies programs by 2010.  

"The program helps break down stereotypes that young girls and minorities find at that age," says Aslin. "We want every child in America to experience this, knowing full well they won't all become engineers and scientists. A great aspect of what Pete teaches is teamwork. Everyone has different skills and abilities, but we have to work in teams to get something done."

The girls divide into teams of ten and move through several workstation areas taught by qualified instructors. They include thermo-forming to make the plastic boat body, building electric motors, making aluminum castings and disassembling and rebuilding computers. The girls are eager and highly engaged as this reporter witnessed and as evidenced in the STEPs web pages complete with videos and blogs.

"STEPS opens up new opportunities. I did not know there was so much to engineering. It's kind of neat to do manufacturing and plastics. My sister came here and when I saw the pictures, I wanted to do it," says 16-year-old Andrea Marten, a lab assistant in plastics and boat assembly.