By Julie Sneider, Senior Associate Editor
A highlight of Ellen Shade’s summer this year is the week she spent at Wabtec Corp.’s camp for middle-school-age girls in Erie, Pennsylvania.
Called “Wabtec Girls Who STEAM,” the camp is aimed at middle-school-age girls who have an interest in the so-called STEM subjects — science, technology, engineering and math. The camp is a partnership between Wabtec, which has a locomotive manufacturing plant in Erie, and the campus of Penn State Behrend, located near Erie and where most of the five days of camp activities take place.
A sophomore studying mechanical engineering at Penn State Behrend, Shade spent camp week as a STEAM volunteer, helping dozens of campers and the Wabtec interns who mentor them find their way around the Behrend campus. She also made sure everyone had the supplies and other necessities to complete their assigned activities.
Shade attended the very same camp when she was a seventh-grader and thought it would be a “fun experience” to help the younger girls have as influential an experience as she had at that age. Her STEAM camp experience definitely played a role in her decision to attend Penn State Behrend, as well as to major in mechanical engineering.
“I got to see Behrend at a young age, and I just fell in love with the campus there,” Shade says. “The camp also showed me that engineering — and all the applications that come along with it — can be really fun.”
Wabtec Girls Who STEAM is one of 20 such programs of its kind in the world, Wabtec officials say. The programs began under GE, and Wabtec got involved in the camp in Erie when the company merged with GE Transportation in 2019.
“A ton of research and studies have shown that around middle school is when girls start to lose interest in things like science, engineering and all of the STEM classes. For whatever reason, they feel like they just can’t do it,” says Kerry Hamilton, Wabtec’s senior director of human resources. “So, the idea behind the camp was to get a group of girls together and show them they can do it and that science, technology and engineering can be super fun — and a career.”
Partnering with local universities like Penn State Behrend is key because it gets the younger students onto campus and into science labs to see the practical applications of STEM subjects, Hamilton says.
“The camp showed me that engineering — and all the applications that come along with it — can be really fun.” — Ellen Shade, a sophomore at Penn State Behrend and former Wabtec summer camper. Wabtec Corp. Wabtec also enlists its female college interns — who are studying engineering at the Behrend campus — to serve as the campers’ mentors. Two mentors are assigned to each group of about a dozen girls, who then learn about topics such as robotics, electronic circuits, chemistry, structures and energy.
“The interns spend the entire week with the girls,” says Hamilton. “They show the girls around campus and say, ‘Hey, this is what I’m studying in school and you can do it, too.’ Our interns love being involved.”
The camps are limited to 50 students a year. Although the programming is aimed at middle-school girls, the camp is open to boys. Students are selected for attendance after filling out an application and writing a brief essay on why they want to go to camp. Wabtec officials visit local schools to help raise awareness of the camp, which is free to attend.
Summer 2022 was the first in-person camp since the pandemic. The last two years’ camps were held virtually, which allowed Wabtec to offer the program to international students, Hamilton says.
Still, there’s nothing like being on the Penn State Behrend campus. Campers spend the first four days in the labs and classrooms, where activities are led by female staff from Wabtec and the university.
“We get them into the chemistry lab where they get to design their own lip gloss,” says Nicole Cillessen, an engineering technical leader at Wabtec and one of the camp’s leaders. “That activity is very popular with the girls. Then we take them into the plastics lab where they make packaging for their lip gloss and learn about plastics used in packaging.”
The campers also learn some engineering design concepts; get to make model cars powered by rubber bands and then modified for battery power; and are exposed to computer applications in 3D design.
“Another thing we did this year was create color-changing slime — kids love slime,” says Cillessen. “We talked about properties of light and how things change colors when exposed to it. We also had them design their own roller-coaster, which brings up the engineering design concepts they’re learning about.”
The girls gathered for a group photo at this year’s summer camp. Wabtec Corp. The camp goes by the acronym STEAM — instead of STEM — because it adds an art element to the study of science, technology, engineering and math. The students use their artistic skills to design the color and packaging of the lip gloss, as well as in creating their CAD 3D designs. The purpose of adding art to STEM classes is to help energize the students’ creativity.
“It shows [the students] that going into engineering is not all math and science focused,” says Cillessen. “You’ll get exposed to all of these things [like art] because you need to have that creative element to find success in these careers.”
The camp’s curriculum evolves each year, with Wabtec engineers adding or removing activities to ensure the content remains relevant and to accommodate changes in technology.
On the last day of camp, the girls take a tour of Wabtec’s facilities. This year’s visit included a look inside a real locomotive. The camp concludes with a graduation ceremony, with the girls’ parents invited to attend.
Because the camp is just a decade old and the campers are in the 12-to-13-year age range, the company has yet to hire any female engineers who’ve attended Wabtec Girls Who STEAM. Still, the company views the camp as an investment in its future.
“It’s the long game that we’re playing,” says Hamilton. “It’s important from a diversity perspective to have more women in the field.”
About 19% of Wabtec’s engineers are female, and the company has a goal to increase that percentage as part of its diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, Hamilton says.
“It’s really important to inspire these girls to want to pursue these STEM degrees and careers,” adds Cillessen. “What we’re hoping for is to have at least a few of them have that spark, that moment they’ll reflect back on someday and say, ‘This is why I decided to continue down that path, why I decided to become an engineer.’”
To help light that spark into a flame, Hamilton, Cillessen and other Wabtec officials are exploring ways to stay engaged with former campers to encourage their continued interest in pursuing STEM studies. One possibility under consideration is a gathering of STEAM camp alumnae.
“It’s a challenge, but that’s the next level of what we hope to do,” says Hamilton. “We’re looking for that sweet spot to keep everyone engaged. We get so excited when we meet a college student who says, ‘Hey, I was a participant in the STEAM camp.’”
A college student like Shade, who remembers her camp experience fondly. Having just started her sophomore year, she hasn’t yet determined what she’ll do with her engineering degree after graduation.
“Maybe I’ll want to work at a larger company,” Shade says.
If she does, Wabtec would like to know about it.
