Tech Trek 2019 at Camp Curie@Stanford University
The six 2019 Tech Trekkers from Fremont, Newark and Union City

Months of preparation that commenced back in November 2018 culminated in two week of high energy, when seventy-four, 13 year old tech trekkers selected by AAUW branches from Monterey to Healdsburg and Palo Alto to Walnut Creek and Livermore across the bay gathered at the Stanford campus early July. This included our six tech trekkers selected from the tricity public schools who attended Camp Curie. The girls were closely supervised by dorm mom volunteers from various branches and returning tech trek alumni counselors.

For five exhilarating days the girls engaged in STEM related core classes, heard from inspiring guest speakers from the STEM field,  learnt life skills like managing your money, took field trips to STEM related sites including Knightscope where they learnt about Intelligent ‘machine learning’ robots, had fun at the Stanford fountains, star gazed at astronomy night and got a taste of life in the Stanford dorms. Thanks to generous grants and donations, the camp re-introduced a Robotics workshop that all girls attended.

Branch members were invited to visit the camp on Thursday of camp week. President Kathy McDonald and former Tech Trek parent Geeta Prashar joined us on Branch visitors day and saw the ‘village’ of energy and enthusiasm created at the camp. Our 2019 Tech Trekkers will now take their place on our ‘Pathway to STEM’ and grow into leaders and mentors for younger girls locally.