From July 24, 2016 to July 29, 2016, a STEM Summer Academy for Girls was organized at West Virginia University Institute of Technology with Toyota Motor Manufacturing Virginia University as the primary sponsor, following the success of STEM Summer Academy for Girls held last year (2015). As last year, the main objective of the STEM Summer Academy for Girls is to inspire female high school students' interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) disciplines and encourage them to choose STEM as their college major. Thirty-two female high school students participated in the 2016 STEM Summer Academy for Girls, which constitutes 45% increase with respect to the number of participants in 2015. As another tremendous improvement compared with 2015, 25% of the participants are African American students in 2016. During the academy, the participating female students learned about fundamental knowledge of science and engineering, were exposed to cutting-edge technologies, and conducted multiple mini-projects. The photo in Figure 1 was taken at the academy with all the academy participants.
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