By Khalida Sarwari
For one week this summer, a group of middle school girls traded their regular classrooms for the classrooms and labs at Stanford University, where the Los Gatos-Saratoga branch of the American Association of University Women held its annual science and math camp.
The Tech Trek camp was held the week of July 14 and involved seven local girls who were recommended by their math or science teachers.
The middle school girls who participated in the camp were Kate Zepecki from Fisher, Meshi Shachaf and Hannah Logar from C.T. English, Britney Arce and Grace Landers from Rolling Hills, Sara Moore from Redwood and Michelle Kwan from Joaquin Miller.
Throughout the week, the girls lived in a dorm on campus, ate in the student cafeteria, attended classes in the morning and made excursions and did other special activities in the afternoon and evening. They spent evenings participating in hands-on activities or attending math and chemistry lectures.
Two of these activities were a 3-D math building project and dissection of fish on the dorm steps.
Funding for the Tech Trek camp was provided by the Los Gatos-Saratoga branch of the AAUW, as well as the History Club of Los Gatos and the De Anza Kiwanis.
Tech Trek was started in 1998 by Marie Wolbach at Stanford University, and the university now hosts two sessions every summer.In California, there are Tech Trek camps at four University of California campuses, including San Diego, Santa Barbara, Irvine and Davis, as well as at Stanford, Whittier College, Sonoma State University and California State University, Fresno. AAUW plans to develop Tech Trek in other parts of the country.
