Correspondent photo / Sean Barron Ninth-graders Alexis Steiner, left, and Anastacia Rihel learn to use a laser-engraving machine during Saturday’s Girl Powered Workshop. The event at the Mahoning County Career and Technical Center in Canfield was to foster in girls in grades six to nine a greater appreciation for science, technology, engineering and mathematics and introduce them to careers in those fields.

CANFIELD — One day, Anastacia Rihel hopes to be a professional chef, but her plate now is full of things that are a bit more high-tech.

“In my old school, we didn’t do anything that was hands-on. I heard about this and I wanted to be a part of it,” the Mahoning County Career and Technical Center ninth-grader said.

Anastacia surely was getting a plateful of hands-on experience, though — complemented with a deeper taste for and appreciation of science, technology, engineering and mathematics — courtesy of Saturday’s four-hour Girl Powered Workshop at the career and technical center on North Palmyra Road.

The gathering’s main underlying idea was to “empower young females to get introduced to STEM-related fields and different careers that are there,” noted Jessica Cene, MCCTC’s marketing coordinator.

Students in grades six through nine from area schools rotated between five stations: biotechnology, software engineering, STEM, engineering exploration and

Robotics & Advanced Manufacturing Technology Education Collaborative (RAMTEC). Participants were exposed to everything from forensics to cybersecurity measures, Cene explained.

Anastacia was having an image created via a laser-engraving machine, which is similar to a traditional printer but uses a laser instead of ink to create and design material placed in it. She waited patiently as the laser horizontally and continuously scanned her thin piece of wood to form a movie character she wanted.

“You upload a photo and it gets transferred to this machine, and the image gets laser engraved, but you can upload what you want,” MCCTC freshman Alexis Steiner added.

Alexis went through the same process to create an anime character with the same type of material. She said she hopes to attend Youngstown State or Kent State universities to study cosmetology and work with special effects.

An eighth-grade student from Newton Falls was intrigued by a flight simulator, which gave her a sense of controlling an airplane during takeoff, landing and while in the air. Giving her a few pointers and added guidance was Mike Lopuchovsky, an MCCTC math and robotics instructor.

“In a lab, you get an opportunity to do simulations, and talk about weather patterns and flight paths,” Lopuchovsky said, adding another reason many students enjoy workshops such as Saturday’s is that key aspects have many similarities to certain video games.

Several of the girls also experimented with colored robot-like balls on an elaborate obstacle course by using tablets and iPads that had been programmed to control their speed, distance and movements. Some of Lopuchovsky’s students designed the course and devices to be compatible with it, something that gave the girls a better idea of how robotics works, he said.

In Bob Miller’s classroom, some students were tasked with using technology, deductive reasoning and specialized skills to solve a mystery, with an empty cage serving as the “crime scene.”

“We have forensic scenarios, and they’re going to try to find out where a rabbit named Cookie Dough is,” explained Miller, a biotechnology teacher.

At that station, participants were challenged with interpreting lie-detector information, along with microscopic evidence left at the “scene,” such as fibers, hair and powder to figure out who took the animal and where it can be found. Part of their project also included learning ways to develop timelines and talk to witnesses, as well as how to use digital and fluorescent microscopes, Miller said.

The MCCTC / Valley STEM+ME2 Academy was one of an estimated 100

Girl Powered Workshops worldwide this month to coincide with the United Nations International Day of the Girl Child.

On Dec. 19, 2011, the U.N. General Assembly adopted such a resolution to declare Oct. 11 as a day to recognize girls’ rights and the unique challenges they face around the world, as well as focus attention on those challenges while promoting their empowerment and fulfillment of their human rights.

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