COEUR d'ALENE — Five very smart and a little bit lucky middle school girls got to attend a camp of their dreams last summer, and they gave a presentation about their experience Saturday to their sponsors.

“If these girls are an indication of the quality of tomorrow’s citizens — and I believe they are — we will be in good hands for sure,” said Lisa Nunlist, co-president of American Association of University Women Coeur d’Alene Branch.

The AAUW wants to see more women, especially young women, pursue an interest in STEM fields — science, technology, engineering and math — so they sponsor Tech Trek, a weeklong science summer camp on a college campus. 

At the cost of $1,400 per student, the AAUW sent the five students to Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. The girls joined hundreds of other seventh graders from throughout the region.

The instructors, scientists, lab techs — specialists of every kind — were all women.

Studies show that women’s interest and confidence in the STEM fields significantly drops in middle school.

To combat that and other related issues over the years, the AAUW has advocated for public education and libraries since 1881.

“We aren’t a bunch of women professors, necessarily,” Nunlist said. “It’s just that our first struggle was to get female students to be accepted into colleges.”

One way to get girls interested is the Tech Trek, and the results are just as rewarding for members of the AAUW as they are for the students who participate.

Girls who return from the experience have called it “life changing,” Nunlist said. 

“They’ve said their options for future professions and interests have opened up broadly," she added. "Many of ‘our’ girls had never been on a college campus and hadn’t much thought of themselves as collegiate material. It really instilled an ‘I can do this’ self-confidence at an otherwise unsure age.”

This year’s recipients of Tech Trek scholarships are: Molly Jaeger from Canfield Middle School; Piper Wilson from Coeur d'Alene Charter; Gabi Johnson, Laura Mohr and Vivian Moss from Lakes Middle School. Molly, Piper and Gabi presented their experiences to the AAUW meeting Oct. 28 at The Iron Horse restaurant. They each expressed their gratitude to the local AAUW Branch.