Girls Scouts enjoy new Modesto STEM center on Oakdale Road

About 100 Girl Scouts showed up to get their science on at the grand opening of the new STEM Center + MakerSpace in Modesto Saturday morning.

The new center was opened by the Girl Scouts Heart of Central California to encourage young women to get into the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (known as STEM). The facility has a number of activities that range from robotics and circuitry building, virtual reality and computer programming and environmental science projects.

The 2,300-square-foot center will be open to Girl Scout troops and individual scouts. Beth Peters, the STEM Initiatives Manager for the Council, said she expects the center to host about three workshops a week with more than a dozen different projects that focus on everything from mechanical engineering to space science.

The grand opening had several projects for the girls and their families to enjoy, from building “squiggle-bots” for automated drawing to creating Lego mazes and more.

Peters said she hopes some 1,500 girls from the region and beyond will come through the center in its first year.

“Our goal is always to develops girls’ confidence in almost everything we do. There are four STEM outcomes we are always driving for, and one is STEM confidence,” she said. “By coming into STEM center we want them to meet women who are in STEM who serve not only as experts but as role models.”

One of those role models is the center’s first-ever Local Legend. The honor went to Erica Kenney, 26, a sensory analyst for E.&J. Gallo Winery in Modesto who works with wine aromatics. The former Girl Scout has degrees in food science from the University of California, Davis and the University of Georgia. The center hopes to name a new Local Legend each year, who will be enshrined on the center’s wall.

The Girl Scouts Heart of Central California STEM Center + MakerSpace is at 3330 Oakdale Road.

This story was originally published August 4, 2018 at 2:44 PM.