Welcome to Girls Engineer Maine

GEM is a statewide educational outreach program designed to increase the number of women studying engineering in Maine.  To promote girls in engineering, GEM aims at:

• Helping high school and middle school girls to understand better what engineers do
• Encouraging girls to explore how to prepare for an engineering career

Gem outreach activities include:

• Engineering Awareness days when girls from middle school and high school girls in small group spend a day at the University of Maine exploring engineering and doing hands on projects in different engineering labs with the faculty and their graduate and undergraduate students
• Visit to their alma mater schools by the current female engineering students
• School visits by the university faculty to talk to the students in middle schools and high schools
• Workshops for teachers and guidance counselors

Since its inception in 2009, hundreds of girls in middle school and high school, many of them members of 4-H or Girl Scouts, or home schooled students, have come to campus with their leaders, teachers or parents to participate in hands on learning engineering activities in all engineering departments.  Initial funding for the program came from the University of Maine System followed by the EPSCoR award to UMaine’s Forest Bioproducts Research Initiatives and a grant from the Engineering Information Foundation.