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Sara Jorde

I’m making this boombox for my brother ’cause I already made one for myself,” 11-year-old Alyssa Brown says, brushing hair out of her eyes with the same hand in which she is confidently gripping a hot soldering iron. Just behind her, two less-experienced girls are elbowing each other as they watch Brown gingerly touch the tip of her hot iron to the circuit board in front of her. “Pee-yoo! That stuff stinks,” one girl says, giggling and flapping her hands in front of her face.

Spread out around the loud and crowded room, about 15 other middle-schoolers are hard at work at three long tables building their own boomboxes. This is the Tronix Team, an after-school electronics club for sixth- to eighth-graders who gain real-world engineering experience while learning how to build cool things like laser beams that trigger alarms when siblings enter their bedrooms without permission, mock Mars Rovers that can zoom from room to room, and, most recently, MP3 player/boomboxes made from old lunchboxes.

“These were a little scary at first,” says 11-year-old Nichelle Urman, as she picks up her soldering iron to demonstrate how she melts a little solder to get the tip of the iron wet. “But I’ve never gotten burned, and I like how I can go home and say, ‘Hey, I can make stuff.’ I’m gonna use this [boombox] all the time.”

Urman’s enthusiasm for making something herself is one of the main reasons Steve Birth founded the Tronix Team project nine years ago. A former computer programmer, Birth has been fascinated by all manner of contraptions since the third grade when, with the help of a neighbor, he built a radio that earned him first place in a school science fair. His name appeared in the local paper and he was so proud that he entered the science fair every year after.

Today, as Birth stands at a table showing a group of boys gathered around him how to fit a speaker into the hole they’ve cut in the back of each plastic lunchbox, it’s clear by the smile on his face and the patience in his voice that his enthusiasm for tinkering with technology has not waned with age. “Remember to follow the directions in your book,” Birth calls out to the group, which has devolved into a shoving match over a video that’s gone missing from someone’s backpack.

The scuffle is short-lived and, order restored, Birth directs their attention to page 16 of the “Tronix Team’s Lunchbox Boombox” handbook. The 35-page guide offers step-by-step instructions for building a boombox and also explains how things like circuit boards, switches, and speakers work. Sprinkled throughout the text are encouraging messages like, “You can do it,” as well as warnings: “Glue is hot! It can burn your fingers.”

Nearby, other adults who share Birth’s passion for gadgets are struggling to maintain some level of crowd control while helping each kid attach an MP3 player to their new boomboxes. “Be careful. That’s really sharp,” says volunteer Kelly Cannon, placing her hand over that of a girl who seems to be using a cutting tool a bit willy-nilly on the back of her lunchbox.

“I’ve never seen anyone get cut except a grown-up,” the girl mutters, flashing a give-me-a-break look. Cannon takes the girl’s snippiness in stride and turns to help another girl, who can’t seem to get the speaker to fit into the back of the lunchbox the way it’s supposed to.

Cannon, who is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in computer science and robotics at the University of Minnesota, has been volunteering to work with Tronix kids since 2004, when she spotted a flyer Birth posted about the program on campus. “I was looking for volunteer work I could do with kids, especially girls,” Cannon explains. “There aren’t enough women in the sciences and I thought this would be a good way to encourage girls to try things they don’t normally get to do—like using power tools and soldering.”

The dearth of women in engineering and technology fields is a very real problem, says Peter Hudleston, associate dean for student affairs at the University’s Institute of Technology. Only about 20 percent of students enrolled in IT-related programs across the United States are women, Hudleston says.

Members of minority groups, excluding Asian Americans, are even more rare, making up only about 8 percent of the national IT student population. Studies attribute the scarcity of women and minorities in computer science and engineering to a lot of different factors. But, says Hudleston, “I think a big reason women and minorities don’t enter or stay in these fields is because they aren’t particularly nurturing. The sciences have always been [white] male dominated, and there’s this take-it-or-leave-it attitude that says people should just knuckle down and work and that’s it. If you don’t like it, get out.”

However, Hudleston continues, that rigidity is exactly the same reason white men give when asked by human resources professionals why they choose to leave jobs in engineering and technology. “I think by now it’s obvious that the whole discipline has issues,” he says.

Not only would the addition of women and minorities to the ranks of science, engineering, and technology professionals help improve the fields themselves, Hudleston says; greater gender and ethnic diversity will bring perspectives and viewpoints that will surely improve creativity and the flow of ideas. And that can only be a good thing in workplaces that have a hand in everything from rocket fuel and robots to pacemakers and artificial limbs.

That’s the primary reason the Institute of Technology has made recruiting more women and minorities a top priority in the past two years. Hudleston reports that applications from women are up approximately 60 percent from 2005, and applications from minorities are up 200 percent. It’s a good start, but outreach involving U faculty and students—such as with Tronix Team— is a key part of the institute’s ongoing strategy.

Reaching out to youth to get them interested in the sciences and technology is especially critical, Hudleston says, because if they don’t start down the right path early it could be too late. “Kids really have to take the right math and science courses when they’re in high school if they want to pursue engineering and science in college. Otherwise, they’d spend years in college just trying to catch up so they could start a program.”

Anteneh Detamo, who earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University in 2004, considers himself fortunate to have figured out in high school that science was for him. He was always good at math. But, growing up in Ethiopia, he didn’t have much access to computers. Then, in 1995, his family moved to St. Paul and Detamo began his freshman year at Como Senior High School, where his affinity for technology and science became immediately clear. “I liked how science classes made me use my brain,” Detamo recalls. “I did really well and got a full scholarship to the University of Minnesota.”

Now employed as an engineer at New World Industries, Inc., in Buffalo, Minnesota, Detamo is also pursuing a master’s in electrical engineering at the U. In his off hours, he volunteers to help out with Tronix Team. He decided to lend a hand after hearing Steve Birth speak at a meeting of the University of Minnesota Chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE). “NSBE really stresses the need to do outreach, especially to kids,” Detamo explains. “But I want to help because I didn’t have any idea what engineers did when I was growing up. Tronix is helping kids open their minds while they’re young.”

Over the years, some Tronix Team members have gone on to pursue science-related careers in college. Others have pursued trades, such as to become electricians. But a great many, including those who do attend college, choose not to delve into the sciences, engineering, or technology at all. But Birth believes that the Tronix experience has value for all the kids who participate. “Even if kids don’t take the same path that I did, I can see that so many of them gain self-confidence and self-esteem by working on these projects. That alone will get them further in life than they might have gone before.”

From the start, Birth has focused on recruiting kids from the south Minneapolis schools that are closest to Park Avenue Methodist Church, home to both the Tronix Team lab and the Park Avenue Foundation, which raises the funds needed to support the project. Serving this particular geographic area is important to Birth, who lives in the nearby Kingfield neighborhood. Though the Tronix Team lab is sometimes awhirl with as much street-tough attitude as effort, most of the kids ultimately settle down to work on their projects and clearly are delighted with what they are able to do. “Because we are where we are, we work with a very diverse group of kids. Some of them come from families who are economically struggling, so they’re really excited to make gadgets that their parents can’t afford to buy them.”

Shannon Hynes-Ciernia, 18, met Steve Birth when she signed up for Inventors’ Corner, a science and technology program Birth ran out of Park Avenue Methodist Church for third- to fifth-graders before starting Tronix. In fact, she enjoyed both programs so much she had trouble leaving them behind. “When I got to high school, I was technically too old to be in Tronix anymore,” explains Hynes-Ciernia. “But I really missed it, so Steve said I could come back as a mentor volunteer and I did that for two years.”

Though she ultimately decided to study biology and art at Northland College in Wisconsin, Hynes-Ciernia becomes animated when she talks about how fun it was to make all the projects she did over the years through Birth’s programs. “I remember making lasers and LED lights that we put in pumpkins at Halloween. We had contests to see who could solder the best. It’s good to know that someday when I have a house, if something goes wrong, I know how to use tools and I can probably fix it myself.”

As a mentor on the boombox project, Shannon worked the drilling station where kids followed a pattern to drill holes in their circuit boards. “Some girls were scared at first. But I showed them how they can do the same things boys can do. Sometimes, they even did it faster.”

Micah Fitch, 19, also participated in both Inventors’ Corner and Tronix. He is one of the Tronix kids who did go on to pursue science. He is now a sophomore at the University of Minnesota studying physics. “The thing that made Tronix Team so great is that it wasn’t just for kids who wanted to be engineers, Steve made it so anybody could do the projects. It was just important that we all learned and had fun. Tronix really helped me learn how to be creative.”

Fitch was already actively volunteering for other youth projects when he decided to lend a hand with Tronix. “I did it because I grew up in the city and I’ve seen a lot of my elementary school friends disappear as they got older. I mean, they just don’t do anything with their lives. Maybe they felt like they didn’t have enough support or a path in life. If I can help younger kids in some way, I want to.”

Enabling kids to see the possibilities that lie before them is what the U’s technology summer day camp is all about. Cannon started the weeklong outreach camp two years ago with support from the University’s Digital Technology Center. About 15 middle school students attend the camp, which is held on campus during the third week in August. In addition to getting a taste of college life, campers spend their days building and programming robots, using software to manipulate digital photos, and, this year, building a lunchbox boombox like the one the Tronix kids made.

The number-one goal of the camp, Cannon says, is to help kids, particularly girls and minorities, realize that college is an option for them. “We help kids see that you don’t have to be born knowing you want to be a computer scientist to be one,” Cannon explains. “If science turns out to be something they’re interested in, we can show them how to pursue that. A lot of kids just need a place where they can let their guard down and stop acting tough or grown-up. Places like Tronix and the day camp are the kinds of environments where kids can really feel proud of themselves and start to figure out who they are and what they want to do with their lives.”

Meleah Maynard is a Minneapolis writer. For more information on the Institute of Technology’s outreach programs, go to www.it.umn.edu/outreach. To learn more about Tronix Team, visit www.tronixteam.org.