Engaging High School Girls: Spending a Saturday afternoon watching brain waves [Pipelining: Attractive Programs for Women]

This past spring, 35 girls spent a Saturday afternoon in a darkened hotel room monitoring brain waves. Part of a larger IEEE meeting, the girls, all from Milwaukee, Wisconsin´s Homestead High School Girls Exploring Math and Science (GEMS) club, watched how their own brain waves looked stimulated by various activities. Part of a science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) workshop designed and led by faculty and student volunteers of the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE), the high school students conducted activities while wearing wireless headsets that sent their brainwaves to laptop PCs running MATLAB software.