VO: Nineteen junior high and high school girls spent a week learning how to design, build
and program LEGO robots.
VO: 2013 marked the second year for the Aquabots Summer Camp, put on by the University of Kentucky
and the Kentucky Girls STEM Collaborative Project.
VO: The goal of Aquabots is to encourage girls to consider science and engineering careers.
In addition to completing series of challenges to create LEGO robots to float on and below
water, the girls get to work with female mentors who are studying engineering at UK and talk
with women engineers who work for Lexmark and Lockheed Martin.
Melissa: When I was in 9th grade I took a robotics class using the LEGO mindstorm program
and the NXTs, and that's actually what got me interested in engineering.
Kayla Shoa: There's only like 1 or 2 girls in my classes, I'm in Computer Science and
so it's good to go out there and teach these girls that it's ok to become an engineer and
to show them like, I'm an engineer and you guys can do it too.
Melissa Crawford: people aren't pushing girls to be engineers or doing anything in the STEM
fields.
So if you get girls interested at a young age and if they develop a passion for it then
that's something that they're going to want to keep doing and they'll take it for the
rest of their lives.
Bruce Walcott: I like it because it really puts me in a position that a lot of our young
ladies in engineering are in.
I'm the only male.
And, and I think I get to feel a little bit of the intimidation that our young ladies
feel that go through engineering, who are historically underrepresented.
Bruce Walcott: So the concepts that we teach, we do mathematics through robotics.
We talk quite a bit about programming, and that is an area where ladies are definitely
needed.
And it's not just programming for programming's sake, there's an application involved and
you get immediate feedback, does it work, does it not work.
'Oh you lost your propeller'
Ashlyn Dowdy: They get really frustrated whenever something goes wrong, you have to kinda make
them set down and go through the process of brainstorming and you know, coming up with
a new design of the program, and it's really cool to watch their faces light up when they
finally get it right and they succeed in their mission.
Camper: That's perfect.
Bruce Walcott: Oh that's perfect, yes!
Keziah: I learned, like how, like what kind of controllers to use, what kind of pieces
to put on the robot go in the water and float, not float, and tip and stuff.
Mary: the most challenging part was getting the boat to float properly, which did require
a lot of trial and error.
Daniela: So far I've learned about the buoyancy and how about even it must be and how to get
it even.
Along with programming it so that it can drive around in the water.
Elizabeth: Get the gear trains to work with it right and getting it all stabilized to
where it stays and works.
I've done computer programming before but I've not done it to, make something to move.
Mary: It's all the testing, designing the things and then realizing it doesn't work,
then redesigning it until you get a product that you like.
Natasha: You've put forth many ideas and you want to see if it's worked.
Science is definitely one of my most, the most interesting subject to me, there's so
much, you can never learn too much science.
Caroli: The fun part is getting the challenge.
You just want to be challenged, you don't want to give up, you want to move forward
and complete it.
Mary: There's just so much to learn and no matter how much you learn, we're always learning
more and more about the world and everything.
So you can never stop learning and that's the most interesting part.
Elizabeth: I want to be an engineer when I grow up and I'm not really sure what kind
I want to be yet, and so I'm trying to go to as many camps and things as possible so
that way I can figure out if I want to be mechanical or electrical or even biomedical.
Yulien: I love math and science and I think engineering, and I like to use robots.
I'd like to be a teacher, but after coming to this camp I feel more like being an engineer,
because they're kinda like, engineering is awesome, and now I feel like engineering is
awesome.