Catherine Ross
Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Girl Scouts participated in a hands-on workshop in science and innovation in technology on Tuesday.

About 150 scouts between the ages of 11 and 13 got hands-on experience with careers in science, technology, engineering and math at the AT&T Foundry in Plano on Tuesday.

"I've never done anything like this before," said Avery Rodriguez, of Plano. The activities, which included learning how to extract DNA from a banana, helped the scouts earn credits toward an entrepreneurship badge.

Colleen Walker, Girl Scouts of Northeast Texas CEO and a former engineer, said she hopes the activities open the girls' eyes to a possibility of a career in the sciences.

Although she was a top achiever in classes such as geometry in high school, she was never encouraged to pursue calculus or physics until college, Walker said. Having an experience like this by age 13 would have been enlightening, at the very least, she said.

"I think it would have changed everything," she said. "It would have made the path easier and opened up those horizons so much sooner."