Boothbay Harbor Memorial Library has announced it has been awarded a $11,700 grant by the Gizmo Garden Fund, an organization designed to encourage girls toward careers in science, technology, engineerin, and mathematics (STEM). The fund empowers Maine institutions to provide gender-balanced education in subjects like electronics, robotics and coding in grades six through 12.

The library is one of eight recipients. “The Gizmo Garden Fund is great,” said Desirée Scorcia, youth services librarian. “They aim to make gender participation 50/50, but we want to be inclusive through these programs. In our Minecraft club, we have about 30 percent girl participation, so that’s good.”

Currently, only 24 percent of women in the United States make up the workforce in STEM and, before teaching at Boothbay Region High School and working at BHML, Scorcia used to be one of them. “Being the only woman in my graduating class who studied physics, I learned that the best way to confront stereotypes is head on because most people who promote gender divisive stereotypes don’t know they are doing it – they are only doing what they’ve been taught all along.”

“The grant will go toward three inclusive programs,” said Scorcia. “The first is a workshop called ‘Print-a-pet’ and the other two are classes in (modification) design and game-making.”

The Print-a-pet workshop will use 12 laptops, two scanners and two 3-D printers to bring to life to the imaginations of 12 children. The workshop is based on one Skidompha Library in Damariscotta has done. Scorcia borrowed one of the Print-a-pets to show the kids at her library. “It was a dolphin that wiggled its fins and played the tune ‘Under the Sea’.” Scorcia said one of the boys who has already expressed interest in the workshop plans to print a truck to hug and hold.

The first class — “Mod Design”— is an offshoot of BHML’s Minecraft club and is based on a platform by Tynker that brings coding to younger kids. The class will enable the students to write programs that will alter the game play in Minecraft. “I’ll be happy if we can make the trees blue and the sky green,” said Scorcia. “But I come up with these plans and the children have already moved on to more difficult challenges, so who knows?”

The second class is called “Game Makers,” also based on a Tynker platform. This class teaches kids how to create two different types of games: a projectile-based game— like Angry Birds— and an action-adventure game featuring a character, like a knight, who must defeat enemies.

While the classes will take place mostly in the library’s community room upstairs, there will need to be an area for all the new equipment. “To make space, we’re probably going to take the ’tween room and make it the digital lab, taking the juvenile fiction out and placing it where the barn is in the children’s section.”

The Print-a-pet workshop will be held from Monday, Aug. 21 to Thursday, Aug. 24 from 9 a.m. to noon. Space is limited, so applications need to be filled out. “However, the 3-D printers are ours to keep so we will probably be doing the Print-a-pet workshop again,” said Scorcia.

The Mod Design class will span six Saturdays from Sept. 16 to Oct. 21 from 9 a.m. to noon while the Game Makers class will be held in the spring of 2018.