Maryland Girls Robotics Team

Girl Scouts of Central Maryland (GSCM) is concerned with relevant issues that impact a girl’s journey into adulthood.  These include activities that increase a girl’s readiness for and opportunities to: be successful in school; aspire to pursue rewarding careers; maintain productive interpersonal relationships with a foundation of strong self-image; and respect and appreciation for the outdoors/ecosystem and its resources.  GSCM delivers on its mission through the provision of research-based programs in a variety of venues, using experiential learning techniques and producing impact in girls in K-12 in the national priority areas of STEM education/career aspirations, the outdoors, life skills, and entrepreneurship.

The Girls Go STEM Program will help promote STEM gender equity and provide access to girls who otherwise would not be exposed to high quality STEM opportunities. The VISTA member will refine curriculum, evaluation processes, resources, and systems necessary for sustained implementation of robotics First Lego League STEM programs in underserved communities.  Parent/Caregiver engagement will play a larger role, and the VISTA member will design parent materials and venues for parent/caregiver engagement in encouraging their daughters to pursue STEM academics and careers.

Girls from grades K-8 will participate in the program and live in Baltimore. All of GSCM programs are evaluated from collected data and reported in our annual report. This method of program evaluation and research has been successful for 110 years. 

We have been running our robotics team since 2021. We have been collecting data and will be able to follow girls after high school to track freshman majors. Our goal is to have a 70% rate of girls finishing our program will into STEM major, therefore ensuring that there will be more women in the STEM industries. 

150 girls

We are applying to this challenge to access learning development modules aimed at refining our program model and plans for scaling our program. 

Violet is connected to our Baltimore community and takes seriously the innovative ideas and creative ways of all our girls. She participated in the first robotics team's field trip by going with the girls to the Maryland Science Center. In May 2021, the girls had a field trip to the Maryland Science Center. Visiting the Maryland Science Center gave the girls the opportunity to explore and examine the different types of science projects that can be created through the use of science. The goal was to engage the girls in innovative authentic experiences through the science world that would also help to engage them to be lifelong learners and peek their curiosity for science.

Our solution approached the problem in a new and significantly improved way by making the curriculum more applicable to conservation and energy sustainability in the ways that our girl scouts could change their communities in practical ways. 

Impact goals:

150 girls will go through our robotics program

of 150, 125 will discover ways to implement robotics into sustainability practices in their community.

of 125, 100 will develop prototypes that will have sustainable models

of the 100, 75 will present their models to community stakeholders to involve the community in early adoption.

The indicators we chose will show how girls are taking their experience to ideas to expand. This type of ideation is a great indicator to show the exposure and possible career paths of girls who participate in our program.

We expect our solution to have an impact on the problem because we have data to show because of our program, girls showed more interest in their science classes and ultimately positively affected their grade. 

The core technology is using coding to create the movements of the robots. 

10 full-time workers

5 part-time workers

Since 2021.

Since we have had success in other counties of our council, we are focusing on marginalized groups to give access to STEM exposure for free. Partnering with our community schools, makes implementation seamless for our students since we are school based. 

Our business model is a membership model, where members are able to take part in our programs for a fee. In addition, we have generous constituent base that makes some of our programs free. 

Making this program sustainable, would take grants, donors, and volunteer hours which we are working toward. 3

We have received in-kind donation from Lego to administer their robotics curriculum. Staff time right now is charged to our general operations.