On Friday, December 4, 2020, the FIRST Ladies subteam hosted a Game Night!  There were 26 attendees from 7 different FIRST teams, including FRC 78, 117, 2177, 3504, 3654, 4467 and FTC 9821.  Aeryn A. and Samhita G., the co-directors of FIRST Ladies, ran the event.  For the past three years we have hosted a… Read more

During the offseason, Girls of Steel worked to reorganize the structure of the business and tech subteams.  Read more about it here.  We are working hard to adapt to the challenge of adjusting to all-virtual preseason meetings.  Each subteam is still hard at work, and has found ways to adapt to all the changes this… Read more

We started off the Ultimate Goal season knowing that we would be meeting virtually at least through December 2020 and for the foreseeable future after that.  Our first meeting was an introduction to Canvas and Zoom.  Canvas is Carnegie Mellon’s online learning platform. We log in to the Girls of Steel Robotics course on Canvas… Read more

  This season’s game for FIRST LEGO League is called RePLAY and it is focused on promoting exercise in the community. This year due to COVID-19, the students participate at Carnegie Mellon University using Zoom through Canvas.  Also due to COVID-19 and the lack of access to our robotics kits, we are placing a greater… Read more

This year we are continuing to host amazing female role models for Girls of Steel.  Past speakers include Julia Parsons, WWII codebreaker; Carnegie Mellon University Professors Henny Admoni and Jessica Hodgins; PPG executive Rebecca Liebert, and Leanne Meyer, the Executive Director of the Accelerate Leadership Center at the Tepper School of Business and Program Director… Read more

Before the Covid 19 pandemic, we offered robot workshops and robot demos on a regular basis as part of our community outreach.  With in-person outreach suspended since early March 2020, we have offered virtual outreach activities such as our FLL Jr,  Girls of Steel Expo, FLL Camp, Introduction to Scratch Workshop, and FLL teams.  With… Read more

Throughout the COVID-19 quarantine, Girls of Steel has been working virtually to follow our mantra of “always improve” by reflecting on all aspects of the team and determining how we can better ourselves in the 2020-2021 season of FIRST: Game Changers.  One of the biggest improvements being made to the team this year is the… Read more

In light of the social distances guidelines imposed by the COVID 19 pandemic, many activities and summer plans had unfortunately been indefinitely postponed or suspended.  Seeing that there was an overwhelming number of students interested in participating in our virtual summer robotics programs, the Girls of Steel hosted its first virtual “Introduction to Scratch” workshop,… Read more

  The 2020 FLL Workshop was the first time that Girls of Steel hosted and ran a free virtual summer camp. Nine Girls of Steel mentors and 53 grade 4 to 8 students participated at the camp.  Through different Zoom functions over the week the students learned the basics of Scratch-based EV3 programming, discovered reverse… Read more

We had the privilege to talk to Ayana Ledford on June 1st via Zoom. She is the Director of Diversity and Inclusion in CMU’s Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, which makes her the perfect person to help guide the Girls of Steel for its 11th year and kick off the renamed Diversity Equity… Read more