Five middle school girls from MPS Hayes Bilingual school were selected to be part of GE Girls at MSOE program June 20 – 24. They join 30 other young ladies from Shorewood and Waukesha schools.

Principal Yolanda Hernandez is proud to have her students participate in GE Girls. “It’s great to have GE encourage and support our students in these high need areas of science and math,” Hernandez said.   “My hope is that these girls not only learn from each other academically, but culturally as well and choose to pursue careers in these areas of high needs.” 

The GE Girls program is a week-long experience that features dynamic curriculum on topics such as physics, math, chemistry, and electronics. Girls participate in numerous hands-on interactive learning exercises and skill development intended to spark their interest in building engines, understanding combustion, electronic circuitry, medical imaging, Lean principals and even the chemistry know-how needed to create lip gloss and ice cream.   Soft skills, such as team building, communications, collaboration and problem solving are also integrated into the GE Girls experience.  

Hayes Bilingual student Daniela Prado likes the idea of working with students from other schools. She wants to be able to learn from them and share what they do at Hayes Bilingual.

School leaders select the girls to participate who are being accompanied by Hayes teacher Irais Cabral. GE Healthcare covers all the expense of the program to enable students to participate at no charge.

The GE Girls program is designed to stimulate and maintain interest in science, engineering, technology and math (STEM). Today, men far outnumber women in science and technology related occupations. Studies show that middle school is a time when many girls lose interest in science and math.

GE Healthcare has a long history of supporting education and STEM activities in southeastern Wisconsin through a host of volunteer efforts including FIRST Robotics mentoring, STEM Forward programs, Junior Achievement, in classroom programs and more.

GE Girls partners in southeastern Wisconsin include GE Healthcare, GE Power & Water, GE Women’s Network, and MSOE as well as the Milwaukee Public Schools, Waukesha School System and Shorewood School District.

Since it began in Wisconsin in 2012, a total of 140 girls (including 2016 members) have participated in the week-long program.  This is the first year the program has been expanded into school districts outside of Waukesha County.