Cook volunteers help girls get excited about STEM

 Our Cook engineers work every day to improve patient outcomes, and they wanted to help young women think about how they could use their own creativity and talents to improve the lives of others. Last spring, several Cook engineers volunteered their time in our community, encouraging young females to explore careers in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields.

WOW! That’s Engineering! event inspires girls to invent
In February, Cook partnered with the Girls Scouts and the Society of Women Engineers to put on the event, WOW! That’s Engineering! This event was held at Ivy Tech and featured a parent and educator workshop, keynote speaker, two break-out sessions, and a design expo. During the break-out sessions, the 100 Girl Scouts (grades kindergarten through fifth grade) worked to earn their inventor or product designer badges. They brainstormed how to fix crumbling infrastructures, designed bridges, and then tested their bridges using model cars and weights. The girls also heard stories of how some women in developing countries need to walk miles to get clean water, then they designed water filters using sustainable materials.

Over lunch, a panel of Cook engineers spoke about how they became interested in engineering and what their day-to-day lives are like. The girls loved the Cook panelists so much, they swamped them for autographs after the panel was over!

GEMS event introduces STEM careers
In April, the Foundation of Monroe County Community Schools and the Monroe County Community School Corporation hosted the GEMS (Girls in Engineering, Math, and Science) event at Bloomington High School North. The event played host to 75 fifth- and sixth-grade girls from the surrounding community. The morning began with a career expo followed by a series of hands-on activities in the fields of engineering design, chemistry, biology, forensic science, technology, and math.

A team from Cook Pharmica consisting of Rebecca Stoops, Kristen Jones, Mariel Yuhas, Hollie Wilson, Jody Vencel, Simin Zaidi, and Mireya Rivera Sierra also took part in the GEMS event, hosting their own activity station. The Pharmica team introduced their young audience to the important and exciting world of biopharmaceutical manufacturing. The girls were able to see different types of cells under a microscope, and got to use a sterile tube fuser (a piece of lab equipment used for welding thermoplastic tubing) to make necklaces filled with glitter and colored liquid. The future scientists and engineers also had the chance to make Gatorade-flavored boba candy in a fun and tasty science experiment.

See some snapshots from the GEMS event in the slideshow below.

Time well spent
Thank you to everyone from Cook Medical and Cook Pharmica who participated in these events. By taking the time to share their passion for STEM, Cook women are inspiring the next generation of female scientists and engineers. Who knows, in the not-too-distant future, some of these girls may be putting their talent, curiosity, and creativity to work right here at Cook!

Kim Rohlfing, team lead and administrative assistant, Cook Group, also contributed to this story.