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Girl Scouts USA CEO visits ORNL to discuss STEM programs

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Feb. 3, 2015 – Girl Scouts of the USA Chief Executive Officer Anna Maria Chavez visited the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to learn about its efforts on behalf of science, technology, engineering and math education (STEM) programs and how they can be incorporated into the Girl Scouts national program.

“We have actually always been focused on science and math with girls and Girl Scouts from the earliest days when our founder, Juliette Gordon Low, was teaching girls about science activities,” Chavez said. “She was teaching them to weld. Clearly, that has been part of our DNA for 102 years. We also knew that girls wanted those activities and they were correlated activities to their school work.”

Using the example of Liane Russell, who helped develop ORNL’s renowned mammalian genetics program following World War II, Chavez said the Laboratory’s past and present are filled with women making a difference in science.

“She was before her time,” Chavez said of Russell. “They even have a scholarship named in her honor. I was telling to the director here how important it is for girls to see role models in the science, engineering, technology and math fields because girls can’t be what they can’t see.”

UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.