Educational outreach

Expanding Your Horizons

Volunteer and participants at Expanding Your Horizons.

The Missile Defense Agency’s Educational Engineering and Science Student Outreach (EESSO) participated in the Expanding Your Horizons program at Sci-Quest, Hands-on Science Center on April 27, 2010 through April 30, 2010. Volunteers joined 1,000 7th-grade girls from Madison and Limestone Counties for a hands-on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) activities at the first Expanding Your Horizons conference in Alabama.

Expanding Your Horizons is a national program designed to encourage middle school girls to pursue education and careers in STEM. Studies show girls tend to lose interest in those subjects at that age.

Girls from a variety of area schools and volunteers from the community attended each day and heard from a different keynote speaker, including Pam Hudson, CEO of Crestwood Medical Center; Lisa Williams, founder and former president of 3D Research; and Pam McCue, director of the Missile and Space Intelligence Center. Each speaker discussed her own personal journey in pursuing a STEM career.

Volunteers assisted the girls in hands-on workshops where they extracted their own DNA from inside their cheeks, made their own robotic bug using circuits and electricity, solved medical mysteries using genetics, made clean drinking water for astronauts, and built straw structures and tested them against weight and wind.

"Many middle school girls don’t realize what STEM fields are all about, so this was a great opportunity to show them,” said Cyndy Morgan, executive director at Sci-Quest.

For more information about Expanding Your Horizons at Sci-Quest, please visit www.expandingyourhorizons.org .

For upcoming events that MDA volunteers will be participating in, check out the calendar of Outreach Events.

 

More Photos

Participants at Expanding Your Horizons. Participants at Expanding Your Horizons. Participants at Expanding Your Horizons. Participant at Expanding Your Horizons.  
           
Volunteer and participants at Expanding Your Horizons. Volunteer and participants at Expanding Your Horizons. Volunteer and participants at Expanding Your Horizons. Volunteer and participants at Expanding Your Horizons.  

 

Contact Us

We would like to hear from you – Students, Parents, Teachers, Counselors, and other STEM community members.

Are you seeking support for a STEM-related activity? Are you interested in volunteering for one of our upcoming activities? Are you a teacher, parent, or student seeking additional information about our programs and the STEM career fields?

If so, please contact us at educationaloutreach@mda.mil and we will be glad to answer your questions.