Our Jumpstart Fellowship Program provides opportunities for diverse Massachusetts high school girls to learn about careers in robotics, expose them to technical skills and develop their professional networks through direct engagement with industry professionals. The curriculum exposes young women to the many technical skills in areas that are included in the robotics industry, from programming to design and simulation, to hands-on building, prototyping, and testing. The program also includes a summer internship where the girls are given the opportunity to work and use the skills they learned.

Our pilot program included eight high school girls from Boston, Revere, Jamaica Plain, Charlestown, Everett, Roslindale, Cambridge and Dorchester. These girls were selected through an application and interview process.

The program began meeting regularly during the April 2021 school vacation week and continued May thru June every Saturday. Highlights from the program included:

  • Building a Robotic Hand
  • Soldering
  • Learning to use power tools
  • SolidWorks
  • MathWorks
  • 3D printing
  • Field trips to participating fellowship companies

We held an event at the end of June to celebrate the completion of the curriculum portion of the program, award students their stipends for completing the session, and wish them well as they began their internships with GreenSight, Autonodyne, Activ Surgical and Lightspeed Manufacturing.

Carolyn Kirk, Executive Director, MA Tech Collaborative, congratulates the Jumpstart Cohort1 students and provides stipends for completing the program.

MassRobotics Girls Jumpstart Cohort 1 Students – 2021

As with any pilot program, there were many lessons learned – we are incorporating feedback from both students and employers and updating our curriculum and programming. We will be opening applications for the Jumpstart Girls Cohort 2 on September 1 and plan to double the number of students in the program. Applications will be due mid-October. Stay tuned! We will be announcing information session dates and providing application link shortly.

Many thanks to our program supporters:

Interning at Autonodyne               Interning at GreenSight