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GPS Students Join in Million Women Mentors' Fifth Anniversary Celebration

Various science classes commemorated the day with STEM activities during lab.
On Thursday, December 5, Million Women Mentors, a global movement that encourages and supports women and girls in STEM, celebrated its fifth-year anniversary. In order to commemorate this event, various organizations around the world focused on and hosted women and girls in STEM activities. 

The local MWM group sponsored a STEM speed mentoring event, where high school girls had the opportunity to talk to women in diverse industries. Women involved in cybersecurity, data analytics, marketing, computer programming, and engineering met with students, and the girls could talk one-on-one and ask questions. GPS students who attended were Abi Austin ’22, Alivia Harvest ’23, Emily Kreek ’22, Manasa Makam ’22, and Astha Sinha ’21.

In conjunction with MWM’s milestone, GPS took this opportunity to highlight some of the everyday experiences of our Middle and Upper School students in their STEM classes. Mrs. Katye Couch’s seventh-grade science class tried out Little Bits, electronic building blocks used to make circuits, to think about ways a touch sensor might be used in a system to help vision impaired people navigate. 

Mrs. Kristi Springfield’s eighth-grade science class began building and testing their Rube Goldberg machines. Dr. Brandon Noel’s biology class examined the relationship between surface area and volume in relation to cell efficiency. Mrs. Tracie Durham’s AP Biology class studied photosynthesis and the effect of changing light intensity or color. Lastly, the Tucker River Fellows visited the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute (TNACI), where they worked with a reintroduction biologist to study brook trout and sturgeon. Some girls dissected a brook trout and one girl fed the sturgeon.

GPS is committed to growing a nationally recognized STEM program, leveraging our already robust curriculum with real-world integration and exposure. While STEM subjects have long been taught here, our teachers continue to innovate and present opportunities for interdisciplinary learning, which becomes key to discovery.
 
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