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Galloway, N.J. — Before helping each group of students complete their laser projects, ��������app Physics Professor Joseph Trout asked the same question.

“Are there any future scientists here?”

Quite a few of the middle schoolers said yes, including Lilly Voss, an eighth grader from Galloway Township Middle School. She was one of about 150 girls from six South Jersey middle schools on Jan. 3 who participated in Tween Tech, an annual event to engage girls in fields in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

“I love how they are teaching us different things that we don’t really learn in school,” said Voss, who took Trout’s Lasers and Lissajous Figures workshop. She worked with a partner to build a device to display laser figures on a wall. “Like lasers, I haven’t done that in school.

“I also like how it’s all women. It’s super cool to see all the girls here.”

Each participant chose two of 11 different workshops ranging from building a wind-powered turbine and tapping sap in Stockton’s Maple Grove to investigating a crime scene and coding a spherical robot.

Claudine Keenan, a special assistant to the provost at Stockton, has organized the event since its inception in 2017 with the Atlantic and Cape May branches of the American Association of University Women.

“I’m grateful to work at Stockton, whose faculty, student and staff scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians volunteer their time every winter to inspire young women in STEM fields at the very time when the research suggests they might otherwise turn away from these vital areas,” she said.

Trout said he’s done the workshops for the past couple of years and realizes how important it is to expose girls to science.

“I was raised with seven sisters and most of them weren’t interested in this, but two of them were, and they were always jealous when I would come home from the Boy Scouts with things that I had built,” he said. “So, it’s good for young girls to get a chance to do things like this.”

Stockton senior Breanna Hawkins had a similar experience when she was a child after someone from the Boy Scouts came to her school. When she expressed an interest in doing fun things outdoors, she was told she couldn’t join because she wasn’t a boy.

“I love the outdoors, and it was really disappointing to be so interested in something like that and then to just be told, well, you’re a girl,” said the Environmental Studies and Language and Cultural Studies major.

Hawkins, who’s also the president of the Stockton Birding Club, became the first Stockton student to host a Tween Tech workshop. She talked to the middle schoolers about using the Merlin Bird ID app to identify birdsong.

After presenting the students in the classroom with some audio samples of birdsong and how they correspond to visual sonograms, she took them outside to a bird feeder to show how the app uses artificial intelligence to recognize birds just by listening with your phone.

“We have to engage young people in the outdoors because when people are interested, they have a stake in the game to help save the planet or help with conservation efforts,” said the Marshall, Michigan, native.

The workshop resonated with first-time Tween Tech attendee Amelia Isom, an eighth grader from Galloway who spent a week at Stockton last summer in the STEM-focused Tech Trek program. She said she didn’t realize before the workshop that each bird species had a different call.

“I didn’t realize that they were so diverse. I’m very interested in environmental sciences, and I haven’t really learned about birds, so it’s really interesting to learn about that, as well as AI,” Isom said. “I like going hiking and being outside, especially in the summer, so I think it would be very interesting to use the app.”

Isom was one of about 30 students from Galloway Township Middle School who attended Tween Tech this year, said Paula Junker, the school’s principal. That number is up from 20 last year, and Junker said she plans to continue to take advantage of the unique opportunity to bring her students to campus.

“In seventh and eighth grade, you don’t know what you want to be or what is out there. A lot of times we just know what our parents know or what they did,” she said. “This gives the girls opportunities to see what options are out there and help figure out what they might be interested in.”

In addition to opening the students’ eyes to STEM fields, Keenan hopes the experience will ultimately lead them to major in a science field at Stockton.

“Many prior Tween Tech attendees have become Stockton students who are pursuing majors in Biology, Chemistry and Environmental Science right now,” said the former dean of Stockton’s School of Education. “Their hands-on experiences at Stockton have moved them beyond envisioning in the abstract. They tangibly engage with the inspirational faculty and leading-edge equipment that make Stockton the place they want to attend.”

Other schools that participated in Tween Tech include Fernwood and Alder middle schools in Egg Harbor Township, William Davies Middle School in Hamilton Township, Weymouth Township School, Southern Regional Middle School in Manahawkin and Margaret Mace School in North Wildwood.

-- Story by Mark Melhorn, photos by Susan Allen