In Charlotte, Brown and Caldwell teamed up with Project Scientist, a nonprofit that promotes STEM education and advocacy for girls. Leslie Jones, Sarah Ponivas, Grant Sharpe, and Trille Mendenhall worked with Keri Cantrell of Charlotte Water and Alyssa Sharpe of Project Scientist to create a program that focused on water engineering and its impact on Charlotte’s local community.

In all, Brown and Caldwell hosted 36 bright and inquisitive students on March 31 as they toured the office, asked lots of questions and built a model water distribution system to Tupperware buildings.

“I think exposing the girls to our work, and the STEM field in general, shows all the different options available to them and makes them consider their everyday world a little differently,” Jones said. “There are careers around the smallest things they take for granted in their lives. They never thought about the who, what, when, where, how in getting water to come out of their faucet, and I appreciate that Brown and Caldwell allows us to share that experience and options with them.”

Earlier in March, fellow East Coast Brown and Caldwell staffers also took an active role in STEM education as proud participants in New Hampshire Department of Education’s fifth annual Girls in Technology Day.

Diane Nascimento, Liz Wilson, Tamara Sorell, Tracy Chouinard, Judy LeClair, Natalie Sierra, and Marilyn Wade volunteered to design and facilitate a workshop on groundwater contamination, migration, and remediation.

“The students were enthusiastic about exploring how contaminants migrate using the stream tables,” Wilson said, “and were really engaged in testing different filtration methods for removing solid and dissolved contaminants from water.”

These Massachusetts BC geologists, engineers, and scientists also shared their educational paths and necessary skill sets for a fun and rewarding career in environmental consulting.