Our Girls Scouts initiative began as a conversation between Rebecca Shini, a Greenfield high school teacher, and Tamara Payton, the Central Indiana membership development manager. In their conversation both parties expressed a concern for incorporating Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) into the Girl Scouts curriculum based on the then recent “Generation STEM Report” released by the Girl Scouts Research Institute. In particular, Ms. Payton wanted to organize a Biotechnology workshop for her Scouts in Central Indiana but was not sure how to do so. Aware of our enthusiasm and desire to engage budding scientist, Mrs. Schini referred Ms. Payton to the Purdue iGEM team. Together we organized the implemented the following workshop with 6 Girl Scouts ages 9-11 on May 18th 2013.

• Generate interest in young women about possible careers in science and technology
• Provide female scientist as role models
• Make them feel like scientists
• Discuss how to find more information on STEM

The Introduction of Synthetic biology and Biotechnology for students (esp. 3rd-5th grade) is best broken into three target stages:

Exposure: What is synthetic biology/biotechnology?

1. Lecture: Intro to SynBio and what is DNA?

(Insert a better explanation of the lecture content, questions they asked, and how they reacted to the info)

2. Relate Concepts to the Real-World:

Clips from the “Playing God” BBC documentary (Need more substance here. What were the clips about? How did the girls react? Why did you show them this?)

Technical: How does synthetic biology/biotechnology work?

1. Strawberry DNA Lab

(Insert explanation of strawberry DNA lab and how it went)

Implementation: What can we do in synthetic biology/biotechnology?

1. Overview of Scientific Method

(Again, what did you talk about? What was their reaction? Why did you talk about this?)

2. The 2012 iGEM project Review: navigating iGEM wikis

(Same thing as above.)

The next time we conduct this workshop we hope to provide before and after assessments to quantitatively determine what our students are learning. We would also like to start a mentoring program by providing avenues for our participants to reach the team for advice. We also want to track where they go so we can help start High school iGEM at their High schools.