Lucy:

Girls are being stereotyped and deprived of STEM education and opportunities starting at a young age, with the result that only 24% of STEM workers are woman. With the rise of robots, society is beginning to shift to a STEM oriented world so it is important to get young girls interested in it. The Speak Up Pop Out Mural encourages girls while also educating them about influential women who they can look up to for inspiration.

Hopefully, the mural will soon be installed in an elementary school where it can inspire young girls everyday. The from of the mural is a scattered image split into seven different shapes, each with a different theme. Each section is based off of a woman in STEM and has objects related to them. For example, one panel is designated to Katherine Johnson who worked at NASA as a mathematician and calculated the trajectory for the first flight to space. So, her section has poster saying “we can do math too” and a plane flying above it. Each section is made of an acrylic base of either pink, blue, yellow, or purple, and has acrylic pieces cut into objects that are layered on top in more fun colors. Using clear acrylic panels and 3D printed brackets, the whole mural can be assembled and attached to the wall with nuts and screws. Also, one of the acrylic panels for each shape has a description of the woman that it is based off. The fun colors and divided shapes is based off of 80’s pop art, and is fun and eye catching in order to attract young kids. The whole piece is about 4 ft tall and 3 ft wide.

Annabelle Turner:

An acrylic wall-sculpture designed to encourage and inspire young girls to study STEM subject and enter STEM fields.

        The Speak Up Sculpture is designed to educate and inspire little girls to join STEM fields.  As of 2017 only 24% of STEM workers are female. One of the reasons women  don't pursue STEM is that they are not informed about other women in STEM, and don't want to be the only woman in a STEM job. Girls often grow up thinking that men are better at STEM, even though they often score the same to better than boys on STEM based tests. This project tries to inform and encourage young girls that they too can be successful at STEM. With acrylic boxes, the layered sculpture uses bold contrasting colors to catch the attention of young children. Upon closer inspection, each box is themed to fit with the short bibliography on the side. Each box was assigned a different woman in STEM whose achievements aren't widely known. The bottom left section is dedicated to Marie Curie, who discovered radium and polonium. She was a chemist who worked with radioactivity. On this section we added a beaker with puffs coming out to touch upon the fact that she was a chemist. This sculpture targets young girls so that they can grow up being encouraged to do STEM.