College shares indigenous engineering with Girl Scouts

On July 7th, the College had the honor and privilege of hosting 37 Girl Scouts (ages 13-18) from around the country as the last stop of the inaugural Girl Scouts of Hawai’i Pacific Exploration in STEM Destinations Camp.

Their stop included a lively “Talk Story” session with the reigning Miss Hawai’i USA and 2016 alumnae of the College–Kiana Yamat–who spoke about the importance of greater female representation in the male dominated field of engineering.

The tour then moved on to the College’s fabrication lab (FabLab), where several burning questions on the intricacies of 3D printing were answered by expert technician and current student of the College, Makana Onzuka.

The tour included a quick stop by the College’s award-winning Robotic Space Exploration (RoSE) lab, where members of the team gave a glimpse of the hopes and aspiration for their program.

The Girl Scouts then received a crash course on traditional Hawaiian lashings, courtesy of hale builder and Windward Community College professor Dr. Kalawai’a Moore. The presentations concluded with an in-depth briefing on the challenges of permitting for traditional Hawaiian structures from Dr. Elena Brown, D.Arch, AIA, CDT of Mason Architects.

Finally, the Girl Scouts broke up into five teams and were given 30 minutes to build miniature hale pili that were then subjected to an innovative new structural integrity test courtesy of the College’s Engineering Student Ambassadors.

15 high school interns from the College’s recently re-established and wildly popular Junior Engineers Summer STEM Experience (JESSE) also took part and had the opportunity to mingle with the Girl Scouts while lending a hand in the hale pili building exercise.