Search

Over the past two years, a team of female faculty and industry innovators have collaborated to develop a new Junior (4th and 5th graders) Girl Scout badge in Mechanical Engineering. The activities required to earn the badge cover engineering careers, kinematics, thermal energy, the design process, and learning about new technologies. The Girl Scout Council of Greater Atlanta is sponsoring our engineering badge as a "Council's Own" badge. The badge is also sponsored by the ASME Design Engineering Division and Lockheed Martin. This paper serves as a structured guide to the process of creating a Girl Scout badge from scratch, to encourage and support the development of additional new badges. The process includes the following components: team assembly, curriculum research and development, piloting the badge, refinement, secondary badge piloting, and embodiment/deployment. Two workshops were delivered to Girl Scouts in parallel with the ASME IDETC 2015 and 2016 conferences, allowing the team to test and refine the badge activities. The first set of thirty-six Girl Scouts earned the badge during the workshop in August of 2016. In addition to a physical badge, the team has developed a badge guide and badge support website. The badge harmonizes with many activities in the Girl Scouts' "Get Moving" Journey, helping to support troops pursuing those experiences in addition to earning the badge. By disseminating this experience and process through ASEE, the team hopes to encourage others to develop new badges and patches to enrich the Junior Girl Scout experience, especially in (but not limited to) STEM areas. Next steps include launching the badge to a national audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]