\u201cAs a girl who was good at math in high school, I was told I had a brain that worked like a boy. I was like, no, that\u2019s not true,\u201d Causey, a native of Birmingham, Ala., says. \u201cGirls can be good at math too. So that was something that had been important to me for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kleine had read about\u00a0GoldieBlox<\/a>, a line of building toys invented by Stanford graduate Debbie Sterling. GoldieBlox encourages young girls to play in such way that \u201cbolsters confidence in spacial skills,\u201d and the three decided to do their part to bring attention to the fact that the vast majority of engineers in the world are men.<\/p>\n Sterling, an engineer, asserts this is largely because society pushes females away from math and science fields virtually from birth. Gender-focused toys are an example.<\/p>\n They had initially hoped to bring in Sterling herself but settled for her\u00a0TED talk<\/a>. Still, by all counts the program was a rousing success.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a packed house. I was really impressed with how much publicity was around the event and the kind of audience they managed to draw,\u201d Hahn, who specializes in cognitive development, said. \u201cI wasn\u2019t expecting the crowd that they had. In fact, it\u2019s probably one of the largest audiences that I\u2019ve ever talked in front of at Furman.\u201d<\/p>\n Hahn agreed to participate after hearing the trio\u2019s sales pitch, which consisted largely of zeal for a topic that is also close to her heart.<\/p>\n \u201cIdeally we would have sort of gender-neutral toys that would appeal to both boys and girls, but a lot of the building toys that are out there right now are so geared toward boys that it\u2019s not something girls are naturally drawn to,\u201d Hahn says. \u201cWe\u2019ve known for a long time in the education system that we don\u2019t have nearly enough females in science, math, engineering fields, and that\u2019s a real problem because there\u2019s a lot of talent there. We\u2019re just not encouraging and supporting women to pursue those kinds of careers. It\u2019s a loss in human resources, not to mention unfair.\u201d<\/p>\n Mann sees it first-hand from the moment girls start school.<\/p>\n \u201cChildren are really indoctrinated at an early age. These are girls clothes, these are boys clothes. These are girls toys, these are boys toys,\u201d she says. \u201cWe shouldn\u2019t then be surprised that they begin to internalize that there are girls careers and there are boys careers. We are really doing them a disservice.\u201d<\/p>\n The project didn\u2019t end with the CLP. An ice-cream social in front of the\u00a0James B. Duke Library<\/a>\u00a0raised more than $400, which went to buy GoldieBlox toys that were donated to the\u00a0Frazee Dream Center<\/a>\u00a0as well an after-school program in Greenville.<\/p>\n The teamwork required to pull off a complex venture changed all of three of them forever.<\/p>\n \u201cWe figured out early on that some of us were better at reaching out to speakers and communicating what we wanted from the event while other people were better at the logistical aspect of booking rooms and planning things like that,\u201d Kleine says. \u201cWe delegated the work really well, but that did take a little while to figure out.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s music to Keefer\u2019s ears.<\/p>\n \u201cIf they come through this program, they leave absolutely knowing their strengths. They can talk experientially about how those show up in their lives, and they know how to make decisions and choices around their strengths,\u201d she says. \u201cWe don\u2019t give them a definition of leadership. We try to inspire.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cI think one of the biggest things I\u2019ve learned is that leaders can come in all shapes and sizes,\u201d Kleine says. \u201cOriginally coming into college I just thought that a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":4039,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-administrative","category-shucker-leadership-institute"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4038"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33269,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4038\/revisions\/33269"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Furman](\"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/218\/2022\/08\/Goldie2.jpg\")
<\/a>\u201cWe wanted to somehow put on an event around campus about this issue,\u201d Kleine said, and over several months the three organized a Cultural Life Program highlighting the issue. Working with advisor\u00a0Lorraine DeJong<\/a>, a Furman education professor, they secured a September date in the Watkins Room in the Trone Student Center while lining up a panel that included Furman psychology professor\u00a0Erin Hahn<\/a>, Ph.D., Serita Acker, director of Clemson University\u2019s Women in Science and Engineering (WISE<\/a>) organization, and Lynn Mann, program director at Greenville\u2019s\u00a0A.J. Whittenberg Elementary<\/a>, which features a school-wide engineering curriculum.<\/p>\n