O’Fallon teen Buchanan helps Girl Scouts earn prestigious honor
What started as a fun project in middle school has reaped honors for an enterprising Girl Scout, Katherine Buchanan, whose latest award recognizes her participation hosting a valuable “Summer of STEM” project last year.
She helped the Girl Scouts in St. Clair County receive the Illinois Governor’s Hometown Award last month.
“Being a project winner for the Governors Hometown Award was an amazing opportunity. The other project winners had projects that made such an impact on their communities and I originally had not thought my project even amounted to theirs. Winning the award opened my eyes to see how many people I impacted in my own community,” she said.
The O’Fallon City Council recognized her at Monday’s meeting as well.
Since 1983, the Governor’s Hometown Awards program recognizes those who contributed to projects that improved their community’s quality of life. Criteria includes strong volunteer support, met a need and made a definitive impact, thereby generating a positive outcome in the community and by extension, the state.
The program is administered by the Serve Illinois Commission, the Governor’s Commission on Volunteerism and Community Service, tying GHTA to its mission to improve Illinois communities by enhancing volunteerism and instilling an ethic of service throughout the State.
Katie, as she is called, graduated from O’Fallon Township High School in 2018 and is currently a student at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, where she is pursuing a degree in criminal justice, with a minor in forensic science.
Buchanan earned the Girl Scout Gold Award in 2018 — the highest honor from the Girl Scouts of Southern Illinois — by hosting the Summer of STEM project to engage younger generations in science, technology, engineering and math, particularly girls.
“Science, technology, engineering and math are fields that are mainly dominated by men. Through my Girl Scout Gold Award project, I hoped to encourage more girls to participate in STEM activities and eventually major in STEM fields in college,” she said.
‘An eye-opening experience,’ STEM
“Working with the children to help introduce them to this field was an eye-opening experience for me. Some of the children I worked with over the summer, never realized how broad the STEM field was or that girls were allowed to participate in it as well,” she said.
The summer after she graduated from OTHS, she planned and hosted events including a Junior First Lego League Expo with an activity room centered around simple machines, a Girl Scout day camp with science-based slime activities, and six sessions of STEM-related workshops at the O’Fallon Public Library each week.
This multi-faceted project centered on the need to have more girls experiencing science, technology, engineering and mathematics in the St. Clair County community in order to empower them into STEM futures.
Girl Scout volunteers ran the activity room at the FLL Jr Robotics Expo in April, with more than 30 teams participating in the annual event. STEM sessions were part of the O’Fallon Public Library summer reading session.
It included two age groups and educated up to 75 children per day. During the sessions, Buchanan led hands-on activities that explored topics like weather, physics, chemistry, electricity, space, and robotics. At each session, she also provided a take-home packet with experiments for children to conduct with their parents.
Buchanan said some of the children she worked with had never participated in STEM activities before, and that she felt the outreach through the library was successful.
And when over 100 girls attended camp at Horner Park in Lebanon, STEM activities were included.
The final part of the project was a 3-day FIRST Lego Robotics League Junior camp that involved over 30 kindergarten through third grade students. First, Buchanan planned and ran an activity room at the FIRST LEGO League Jr. Expo, which is an exhibition held for more than 30 robotics teams made up of 6- to 10-year-old students. She planned such activities as simple machines, science experiments, simple electrical circuits and LEGO build challenges.
‘A very intense project’
With the help of a volunteer team she recruited, Buchanan led sessions exploring the engineering design process, building solid structures, and programming motors and sensors using LEGO WeDo software.
The students put on a small expo at the end of camp to show their parents what they learned during the week. She also created an evaluation system to help measure the outcomes of the camp. These evaluations showed 83 percent of the girls who participated were excited to learn more about STEM following the day camp.
Throughout her Girl Scout Gold Award project, Buchanan also updated a website sharing her progress using Wix so she could share the importance of STEM education and Girl Scouts’ valuable role in these fields.
To help make her efforts sustainable, she recruited Girl Scouts to help run the FIRST LEGO League Jr. Expo activity room in the future, and enlisted local FIRST Tech Challenge Robotics team, The Worm Gear Warriors, to continue hosting STEM sessions at local libraries and during summer day camp.
“Throughout my project, I had the ability to connect with a diverse group of children all looking to do the same thing, which was to have fun with science and electronics,” she said. “The audience was able to gain a better understanding of what STEM really entails and that it is just as important for girls to be involved as it is for boys.”
Buchanan said she felt more confident being in charge of a major project.
“Since my Girl Scout Gold Award project lasted from April until the middle of August, it was a very intense process for me in which I learned a lot about myself,” she said. “Something new to me was being able to plan events and really take the lead. Earning the Girl Scout Gold Award has definitely given me the chance to improve my leadership skills.”
Buchanan’s Girl Scout beginnings, family, the future
Looking back, Buchanan joined Girls Scouts as a kindergarten student at Laverna Evans Elementary School.
“Since I completed my Bronze, Silver, and Gold Awards throughout my years as a Girl Scout, I am considered a Girl Scout for life. I enjoyed being in it due to the fact my mom was always involved, whether as my troop leader or council member, and because there were always multiple opportunities to get involved in activities such as robotics that I otherwise would not have had the opportunity to if I had not been a member,” she said.
She began participating in robotics in sixth grade, through Botball.
“After the majority of my team moved into high school was when we made the switch to FTC, or FIRST Tech Challenge. Our team was never affiliated with OTHS’s FTC team, however, our team was supported and funded through the Girl Scouts,” she said.
“My participation in robotics throughout middle school and high school is thanks to the Girl Scouts. If I had not been a Girl Scout, I probably never would have considered joining a robotics team of any sorts,” she said.
A lifelong resident of O’Fallon, Buchanan is the daughter of Larry and Mary Buchanan. She involved friends, family and other Girl Scouts in her project.
As for what’s next, Buchanan is concentrating on school but will volunteer with Scouts.
“My plan for the future is to graduate college in 2022 and go wherever life takes me. For the meantime, I still plan to volunteer with the Girl Scouts at programs and with robotics at FIRST competitions,” she said.
The Girl Scout Gold Award recognizes a Girl Scout’s commitment to excellence as she develops skills and values to meet present and future challenges in her life. To earn the Girl Scout Gold Award, a Girl Scout Senior or Girl Scout Ambassador must design and carry out a project that fulfills a need within a girl’s community, creates change, and is sustainable. The project must be completed with a suggested minimum of 80 hours of work. Only about 5 percent of eligible girls earn the prestigious Gold Award.
This story was originally published December 3, 2019 at 1:25 PM.