COEUR d'ALENE - Safety glasses couldn't hide Kayla Burnin's pleasure.

The 15-year-old Timberlake High School student was happy to be working Monday in the science laboratory at the University of Idaho's Coeur d'Alene Center.

She is among 200 North Idaho high school sophomore girls who will participate in the third annual Women in Science program before it ends today.

"I want to go into nursing," Burnin said. "This is fun."

The purpose of the program is to get young female students hooked into science and math and keep them there, explained Scott Wood, dean of the College of Science at the University of Idaho.

The two-day program is presented through a partnership between the university and North Idaho College.

The most recent data from the National Science Foundation shows women make up 42 percent of the science and engineering workforce in the U.S. In 1999, women accounted for just 24 percent.

While the number of females going into science fields has grown dramatically in the past decade, women are still underrepresented in the physical sciences - chemistry, physics, math, and earth sciences. Less than 30 percent of women are employed as physical scientists such as chemists or physicists.

In the life sciences like psychology and biology, women have achieved parity, Wood said.

"There may even be more women going into those fields. Part of that is because young women perceive those fields as being more helpful for people, animals, society," Wood said. "They don't realize that the physical sciences can also be very helpful to people."

Chemistry is used to determine water quality, and physics research leads to discoveries about energy, he said.

"In general, why women don't go into science as much as men, it's in part because they've not been encouraged by people. Sometimes parents, even teachers discourage women, or at least have done so in the past," Wood said. "Some young women think that boys won't like them if they are, you know, geeks."