Middle School Students Take Part In Get WISE Event

There are more opportunities than ever before for women in the fields of science and engineering.

At the annual Get WISE event, which stands for Women in Science and Engineering, more than 250 middle school students from throughout the western Upper Peninsula got to try their hands at some experiments.

Dollar Bay Middle School 7th Grader Molly Myllyoja said, “We filtered out water by using different materials like sand and gravel, felt coffee filters, and then we got to filter it so it turned to pure water instead of dirty water.”

Michigan Tech has been hosting the event for more than 25 years and it is definitely making a difference.

MTU Center for Pre-College Outreach Coordinator Liz Fujita said, “I think the biggest result that we see is that students go back to school and they talk about it for months, and then the next year, ‘Can we go back to Get WISE?’, and then when they’re 9th grade, ‘Why can’t we go to Get WISE?’, so I think the anecdotal evidence is pretty strong.”

Of course, not all of the participants will be future engineers, but they are still learning skills that will be valuable in other areas as well.

Fujita said, “Even if the girls don’t go into science and engineering, they get to explore problem solving in a team, which, no matter where you end up working, no matter where you go to college, or where you do your education after high school, you’re going to have to solve problems and probably solve them in teams.”

Michigan Tech’s Center for Pre-College Outreach partners with the College of Engineering, the College of Sciences and Arts, and the Western Upper Peninsula Center for Sciences, Mathematics and Environmental Education to make the program possible.