Ted Boscia

Ainslie Cullen ’19 helps a 4-H participant design her own skirt as part of the Style Engineers program.

Knitting fashion design and science, a novel Cornell-University of Minnesota program to engage young girls in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) topics is now available to educators nationwide after successful tests at New York locations this summer.

Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Style Engineers, formerly known as Smart Clothing, Smart Girls, uses hands-on lessons in informal settings to teach physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, math and other technical disciplines relevant to fashion design. Developed by fashion and fiber science experts at Cornell and Minnesota and available at StyleEngineers.org, the curriculum targets middle-school girls because women are traditionally underrepresented in STEM fields.

This summer, 57 girls ages 10 to 15 completed the program in weeklong sessions at 4-H Camp Wyamoco in Wyoming County, 4-H Camp Bristol Hills in Ontario County and the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse. Cornell Fiber Science & Apparel Design (FSAD) faculty, staff and students aided partners at 4-H and Girls Inc. at the YWCA of Syracuse and Onondaga County to identify and train local program presenters – a critical step in transferring Style Engineers from campus to communities.

“Our focus was on making it possible for informal educators to use our curriculum to run their own camps or after-school programs,” said FSAD extension associate Fran Kozen ’72, M.S. ’77. “We have received very positive feedback on both the camps and website thus far. We are pleased that some of the leaders we trained intend to offer Style Engineers again next year.”

For the first two years of the NSF grant, the Style Engineers team developed and refined the curriculum in weeklong summer sessions hosted at Cornell and Minnesota. Now they are disseminating the program online to community-based educators who work with youth at fairs, schools, clubs and camps.

“Informal education engages not only students, but the community by welcoming parents, teachers and youth agencies into the program,” said Charlotte Coffman, FSAD senior extension associate. “These settings also allow young people to learn from one another. At school, they may be told to ‘keep your eyes on your own paper,’ but in Style Engineers they are encouraged to share their ideas and the results of their experiments. As one camper expressed, ‘I can’t believe that the team used my idea – that has never happened before.”

The program incorporates five modules:

• Patternmaking, Tools & Tech, introducing spatial perception, garment shapes and clothing construction;
• Smart Clothing, looking at wearable technology;
• Marvelous Materials, exploring physical properties of materials used in protective garments and everyday apparel;
• Movement Improvement, covering how to design clothes that allow us to move freely;
• We are Engineers, a primer on the engineering design process from brainstorm to prototype to final project.

At Cornell, Style Engineers is led by Susan Ashdown, M.A. ’89, the Helen G. Canoyer Professor in FSAD, Charlotte Coffman, FSAD senior extension associate, Fran Kozen ’72, M.S. ’77, FSAD extension associate, Kristen Morris, Ph.D. ’15, and Denise Green ’07, FSAD assistant professor. Lucy Dunne ’02, M.A. ’04, associate professor of apparel design, leads the University of Minnesota team.

Ted Boscia is director of communications and media for the College of Human Ecology.