Science Buddies is dedicated to helping girls develop and maintain an interest in STEM learning. In fact, 55% of Science Buddies' student-users are girls. Science Buddies' project ideas and activities help girls to innovate, imagine, build, tinker, solve problems, and make things.
In addition, our organization helps to publicize and promote events and initiatives that encourage young female scientists and engineers, such as Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day, to our audience of 15 million teachers, students, and parents.
We couldn’t do this work without the support of our partners, including Symantec. Last month, Symantec announced more than $1 million in funding in support of STEM and literacy education, including to Science Buddies to allow further expansion of our computer science area to help enable and inspire student computer science projects.
Symantec has been a sponsor of Science Buddies since 2007 and has provided core program support and enabled ongoing development of the Computer Science interest area at Science Buddies. Through the years, Symantec and Science Buddies have partnered to celebrate and encourage K-12 computer science exploration both through the creation of new Project Ideas and through visible recognition of students conducting science experiments presenting their projects at science fairs both on the community and national level. In 2009, the company judged and issued "Clever Scientist Awards" at area science fairs. In 2010, they awarded the "Symantec Science Buddies Special Award in Computer Science" at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (Intel ISEF). One of the young computer scientists singled out for a special award was Brittany Wenger, then a middle school student and aspiring computer scientist. Wenger went on to win the 2012 Google Science Fair with her computer science project.
Thanks to this year's pledge from Symantec, Science Buddies plans to prototype a new science kit to further facilitate student computer science exploration. Last year, Science Buddies introduced its first round of convenient, all-in-one-box science project kits and launched the Science Buddies Store. Continued support from Symantec allows potential expansion of the computer science area at Science Buddies to include a hands-on computer science project kit for use with a Science Buddies Project Idea or with other science and engineering activities.
Symantec has been a terrific partner to Science Buddies. Their generous support has enabled us to give millions of K-12 students the inspiration, tools, and guidance they need to engage in hands-on science and engineering. We are thrilled to continue working with Symantec and salute their strong commitment to STEM education.
Ken Hess is Science Buddies’ Founder and President.