 KENT KRIEGSHAUSER/The Register-MailEmily Jackson, left, a Knox College incoming junior, helps two students with a robotics project at Knox during the Knox Summer Science Camp for girls. Science in the spotlight Knox College summer camp just for girls Saturday, June 17, 2006 GALESBURG - Twelve junior high girls from Illinois, Missouri and Kansas turned in their cell phones and gave up instant messaging this week to build robots, analyze fingerprints, study sheep brains, catch bugs and howl at coyotes.As participants in the second Girls Summer Science Camp at Knox College, the girls spent the week engaged in interdisciplinary, hands-on science projects in the college's science laboratories and at Green Oaks Biological Field Station. Designed to expose young women to a variety of concepts and disciplines at an age when many start to lose interest in the sciences, the camp is a step toward closing the gender gap in fields where women are traditionally underrepresented. "It catches everybody in some subject so they can carry that through the rest of junior high and into high school," said Emily Jackson, a teaching assistant at the camp who will be a junior at Knox College next year and is majoring in physics with a minor in math. Mary Crawford, co-director of the camp and associate professor of chemistry at Knox College, said peer pressure is one reason why junior high girls turn away from the sciences. "Nobody wants to look like a geek," Crawford said.
Due to its success in attracting and retaining women science students and faculty, Knox received a grant in 2005 from the Henry Luce Foundation to support the Clare Booth Luce Scholars Program, which provides scholarships for female students majoring in physics or computer science. The science camp for girls is one of the projects funded by a grant the college received from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 2004. Junior high girls from all over the country apply to attend the camp, which is co-directed by Judy Thorn, associate professor of biology. Thorn said there were more than 100 applicants this year for the 12 slots and that the camp is free, but only one student per school can be accepted. "None of the girls know each other when they get here," Thorn said, explaining that having a blank social slate - and being away from television, cell phones and the Internet - for a full week makes for a healthy learning environment. In addition to advanced and individualized study in the sciences, the camp provides a peer group with similar goals and interests for the participants. Crawford said the 12 girls who participated last year keep in touch with her, and with each other. Some of the camp participants may choose to attend Knox when the time comes, but Crawford said no matter where they attend college, the goal is to instill an interest in the sciences early on. Crawford became interested in chemistry as a sophomore in high school. As a prospective student at Knox, she met her future mentor, Bob Kooser, who "planted a bug in her ear" early on about graduate study in the sciences. Crawford said she was a first-generation college student and had not considered what career opportunities there would be for her as a scientist. "A lot of times people just don't know what options are out there," she said. Crawford graduated from Knox in 1989 and went on to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry from Purdue University. She returned to Knox in 1997. Teaching assistant Chelsea Bagot will be a senior at Knox next year. She said her decision to study environmental issues and biology grew out of a love of the outdoors. "It took me a while to figure out that I could study it, not just enjoy it," Bagot said. The teaching assistants, who stay with the campers in the residence halls, said the camp is an opportunity not just to turn junior girls on to science, but to give them a taste of college life. "It's like a mini-Knox," said teaching assistant Hillary Loomis, a 2006 Knox graduate who double-majored in chemistry and Spanish and will be a post-baccalaureate fellow at Knox next year.
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