Menlo Park’s Meredie Cohen earns Girl Scout Gold Award for STEM-based education project

Meredie Cohen, who grew up in Menlo Park and attended Oak Knoll and Hillview Schools, recently earned the Girl Scout Gold Award, the highest award in Girl Scouting. Gold Awards focus on addressing a major community issue with a lasting solution.

Meredie’s project —“Countdown to STEM: Launching Robotics in Underserved Communities”— focuses on the need for universal STEM-based education. For her project, Meredie developed a robotics curriculum for use in afterschool programs, with lesson plans that can be used by volunteers, even if they have no previous robotics experience. She piloted her curriculum with students attending a summer program through Peninsula Bridge, which provides academic and social-emotional support to underserved, highly-motivated middle school students.

Meredie, who is currently a freshman at Brown University, also built five custom kits, each containing all the materials and equipment needed to run an afterschool robotics program. Her kits are being used at Puente de la Costa Sur in Pescadero and by the Space Cookies robotics team for community outreach programs. Download her lesson plans here.