MISSion Innovation gets girls to solve climate crisis through STEAM

FORT COLLINS — Nearly 100 local high school, college and professional women will gather on Saturday morning at Colorado State University to launch the first-ever MISSion Innovation event, an all-woman innovation marathon for climate action.

Participating students will work in small groups with the support of technical mentors to create new ways to reduce greenhouse gases for the city of Fort Collins.

MISSion Innovation invites young women to code, create and collaborate to help the city support its Climate Action Plan and the goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050. The event is meant to be more than just an academic exercise; it is designed to bring young women together to create solutions for a real client with a real-world problem. It’s the latest service learning program from the nonprofit Pretty Brainy, an organization dedicated to empowering young women to develop STEAM skills — science, technology, engineering, art and design and math.

“We’re doing this to help the community pull ourselves out of a potentially dangerous situation with climate,” said Heidi Olinger, CEO of Pretty Brainy, in a prepared statement. “We need diverse ways of thinking that aren’t currently being represented, and girls are naturals at engineering design thinking. We want to activate the minds of the next generation who will be dealing with the fallout of climate during their lifetime. Quite simply, we need girls’ expertise at the table.”

Participants will be supported by graduate students and young professional women, who will serve as hands-on mentors throughout the weekend. The goal is to provide multigenerational peers and mentors, to help younger participants see and talk with women like themselves in STEAM careers and imagine themselves in a STEAM-career future.

Female professors and post-doctoral students from CSU will also give 20-minute lightning lessons on topics like the physics of climate change to stereotype threat and behavior change.

“Each lightning lesson will be a punctuation mark of enlightenment and inspiration throughout the innovation process,” Olinger added, “so girls can see the creative, real-world, philanthropic and social implications of climate change.”

Those interested can read more information online.