Club expands formula getting girls in science

A long-running program that has boosted the academic confidence of young girls and women in Cambridge for 13 years has expanded to Boston and Lawrence this fall.

The Science Club for Girls, cofounded by Cambridge resident and mathematician Beth O'Sullivan, has been part of the after-school scene at five Cambridge elementary schools since the 1990s. This fall it debuts at the Tobin School in Boston's Mission Hill neighborhood.

About 25 girls there in grades 1 to 3 will soon be dissecting cow hearts and drawing life-size human anatomy maps, said executive director Connie Chow, who helped develop the curriculum. One new grade will be added each year.

"We're starting at a very young age," said Chow, "because we want to nurture the natural curiosity children have for the world around us. Our criteria is that a program has to be in an area that's accessible for volunteers because we're so volunteer-dependent, and it has to target groups that are underrepresented."

She said that women in general, but particularly women of color, remain underrepresented in the sciences.

"From 2001 to 2007, the number of women graduating with engineering degrees declined," Chow said. She said she hopes female scientists from the Longwood area's colleges, graduate schools, and hospitals will volunteer for the program.

Chow, herself a scientist, gave up lab research to pursue her career at the Science Club for Girls. But she doesn't feel that she has given up science.

"It's the responsibility of scientists to get the rest of society interested in science," she said.

When O'Sullivan started the club in 1994, she called several local biotech firms looking for women interested in being mentors. The companies all told her they had no women working as scientists. She hoped her program might help change that.

Last year, 600 Cambridge girls participated in the club, said O'Sullivan, and 100 percent of the club's graduates go on to college.

That first year, the club was at the King Open School and open to girls in kindergarten through Grade 2. "In the beginning," she said, "we thought we were going to get a little club of eight girls. But 60 percent of the second grade showed up. We had to scramble to get MIT students to mentor so many."

The club is funded by grants and donations, including from biotech companies.

Jessica Holbert, 19, a Cambridge resident and a freshman at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, has been involved with the club since first grade.

"Without it," Holbert said, "I wouldn't have been so into science. It improved my academic performance, because usually I had learned it there first. I had more confidence to answer questions in class."

She also praised the all-girl aspect of the club.

"Being with a small group of girls, there's more freedom to be wrong, it's easier to open up," Holbert said. "There are less distractions. We developed really good friendships because the program emphasized working together so much."

Chow said many people wrongly believe science is a lonely pursuit, when, in reality, it's more and more collaborative. She believes this aspect of the club helps maintain girls' interest in it.

Girls' focus on science usually declines in high school, Chow said, but the club has surveyed girls who have been through the science club and found their interest didn't wane during adolescence. The key factors she thinks help foster that: having people who believe in them and think a career in science is possible for them; introducing concepts in a concrete, rather than abstract, way; and providing a social context by showing how the science can help someone.

Holbert said science club staff always talked about college, emphasizing it even during elementary school. As a first-generation college student in her family, she's not sure she would have had such a firm expectation set for her otherwise.

The club opened doors to internships for her during high school, which she believes helped her get into college. When volunteers from biotech companies saw her enthusiasm for science, they offered her jobs.

Members of the club perform hands-on experiments until the eighth grade, when they become junior mentors teaching younger students and pairing up with adult mentors.

The high school students involved in Science Club for Girls also form a rocketry team and compete in a national competition, often as the only all-girl team.

Parity in science education is a civil rights issue, O'Sullivan said.

Her daughter, Rachel, also believes it's an international one. In 2005, as a high school student, she tried to start a similar program for girls in an orphanage in Ghana. She had no time to lead the program, however, because she was given an infant to care for full time, as were all the other teens, and experienced at first hand the cultural limit put on girls' education.

Rachel O'Sullivan returned the following year and partnered with a different organization to pilot a program after school. On the first day, a parent came to remove her daughter, said Beth O'Sullivan. But the next day, twice as many girls showed up.

A community version of Science Club for Girls also exists at a Baptist Church in Newton. The group will pilot an engineering challenge this year - designing a Rube Goldberg machine, a complex device that performs a very simple task, said Chow, such as one in Terminal C at Logan Airport. Next year, teams from all clubs will design one for a competition.

The new club in Lawrence is also partnered with a community organization.