With the idea of growing and maintaining an interest among teenage girls in the field of technology, IBM conducted its fourth annual “Exite” camp last week at its Yorktown facility.
IBM hosts 50 Exite (EXploring Interests in Technology and Engineering) camps around the world. The company has run the camps since 1999.
The goal of the camp is to build a foundation of math, science and technology in girls at a younger age.
“Statistics are showing at a lot less women are going into these fields than men,” said Mary Murray, manager of IBM”™s corporate citizenship and corporate affairs department.
This year, about 30 middle school girls from Ossining, Yonkers and Port Chester took part in the weeklong camp
“With roughly 500,000 IT jobs going unfilled in the U.S. alone, it is critical that we take steps early on to inspire girls and instill them with the confidence to pursue technical careers,” said Katherine Hegmann, IBM general manager, global application services, business consulting services.
Approximately 2,000 IBM volunteers, women and men will participate in the Exite program, which spans the tech gamut from design to robotics.
But the immersion into math and science won”™t end for the students after the weeklong camp is over. Murray said each participant will be matched with a female mentor for the upcoming school year to work in these subject areas.
“The goal is to get them excited, and to let them meet female professionals in the field that can serve as role models,” she said.
Yonkers, Port Chester and Ossining schools were selected to participate in the camp because IBM is involved in other programs with the schools. Since the camp has been run in Westchester, other school districts have participated, said Murray.
“We are always open to working with different school districts,” she said. “We try to work with different districts each year.”
Portia Williams, a math teacher at Yonkers”™ Museum Middle School, said,
“It really teaches them how an idea goes from concept to design.”
Williams said she and other members of the school”™s math department selected the students who would attend, based on their interest and aptitude in math and science.
“There are several girls we chose who I think could be very good at engineering. I”™m very excited for them,” she said.
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