Women of Science teach girls about science

PALMER — Before they could give the orange an injection, the girls had to answer a few of the nurse’s questions.

“Why do we want it to be clean?” asked Suzy Freeman, nursing director of the Medical-Surgical Unit at Mat-Su Regional Medical Center, showing the girls the alcohol wipe she would be using to sterilize the orange’s peel.

“Because you don’t want to get the ucky stuff in it,” came the reply.

Ten or so girls then took turns giving the orange its shots. Freeman said nursing students use oranges because they hold more liquid than the average fruit and because puncturing them feels pretty close to puncturing human skin.

Freeman and her colleague, Linda Olson, MSRMC’s nursing director of Urgent Care and Infusion, were two of the presenters Saturday at the Girl Scouts’ annual Women of Science and Technology Day at Mat-Su College. In addition to learning about injections and looking at X-rays of all sorts — even X-rays of light bulbs and wrenches — the girls heard about soil textures and sheep genetics, forest ecology and owl pellets, watersheds, aviation and petroleum geology.

“The presenters are all women who work in science and technology fields,” said Julie Alexander, a Girl Scouts staff member who sets up these events. She said the Girl Scouts have done them in Sitka, Ketchikan and Juneau. The Mat-Su event was the 12th annual Women of Science Day in the Valley.

“We need female role models for girls so that they know those options are there,” Alexander said.

Some of the girls, she said, are now in high school and have been coming to the events since they were in kindergarten. Which is why she likes to rotate the presenters, so girls don’t wind up going to the same presentation year after year.

She also pays attention to evaluations the girls fill out at the end. Alexander said that the soil textures class got the highest marks anyone has gotten in her four years running these events.

“I made sure to give her a personal phone call,” Alexander said of the presenter.

The events are all geared toward hands-on learning, hence the oranges in need of inoculation and the live sheep in the sheep genetics room. It can get kind of messy, though, like when the Tsunami Warning Center brought in dirt and water.

“It took us an hour to clean that room every year,” Alexander said.

It’s also open to non-Girl Scouts. In the nursing room, Theresa Walton, who leads Troop No. 807 at Machetanz Elementary School, said she brought three non-Scouts along with the group that day. All three have signed up now to be Scouts and will act as role models for younger girls.

Walton has a long history with Scouting. She was a Scout herself and worked with the organization into college. She took a 20-year break, she said, before taking on the troop leader role this year.

“I want them to take away knowing that they can do anything,” Walton said of the day’s events. The girls are young, she said, and they have time to try different things until they find out what they have a passion for.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.