COEUR d’ALENE — Heating test tubes of filtered contaminated water and scrutinizing the results through protective glasses, several local high school girls worked toward a solution.

Their challenge during the Women in Math and Science program Tuesday in University of Idaho-Coeur d'Alene's lab was to design filters using raw materials such as carbon, sand, paper and cotton to eliminate contaminates from water. The algal blooms that plague Fernan Lake served as inspiration for the project.

"The whole building a filter is pretty cool to me because I like knowing how things work and how to get stuff done," said Timberlake High School freshman Anni Austin, 14, who stepped away from her research group to talk to The Press. “I feel like if we get a handle on how to make a basic filter, then we could evolve into bigger things to help eliminate blue algae and all of the harsh bacteria in lakes and streams."

For more than 10 years, the U of I-CDA campus has hosted Women in Math and Science programs to encourage young women to pursue STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) careers in industries that are heavily male dominated.

"There’s still close to 2-1 men to women in STEM fields," said Mark Nielsen, interim director for U of I's college of science. "We want to change that. We want to maintain the interest that these young women show when they’re in grades six through 10. We want to keep the interest in these science disciplines."

Sarah Hendricks, a U of I bioinformatics student who volunteered in the lab with the high schoolers, said the Women in Math and Science program is great because it shows young women they have a plethora of options when choosing STEM careers.

"I think there’s a lot of interest in the medical field, and there isn’t a lot of talk about other fields in the sciences, and so I think this event does do a really nice job of emphasizing that there are other things you can do,” she said. "A lot of the girls will say, ‘I want to help people,’ so they assume the only thing they can do is do medical. We try really hard to let them know there are other ways of helping people through the sciences."

Nielsen said a big part of Women in Math and Science is the awareness it creates while encouraging girls to pursue science.

"We show them some fun in the lab, but more than that, it’s role models," he said. "We bring in female scientists, we bring out graduate students so that they can see, ‘Oh yeah, there are women going into these fields.’”

He said the gender balance matters because of the human potential that is lost when women lose interest in STEM disciplines; while young girls are enthusiastic about science and math, that interest decreases as they get older.

"Somewhere around 10th grade the emphasis shifts. Young women start to lose interest in science," he said. "We don’t know exactly why that is. It’s not ability, it must be social factors of some type."

Post Falls High School sophomore Madison Conner, 15, said she already has an interest in science and she was happy to be in the lab that day.

“I think it’s really cool, especially that we get to do the hands-on and figure out how to make a filter," she said. "I think it would be cool to get more women involved."