More than 30 young girls participated in Marion County Fair Queen Kaitlyn Banning’s S”tea”m Party for young girls on Sunday.
Banning, a biomedical engineering student at the University of Missouri, held the event to encourage young girls to be anything they want, even if it is a traditional male dominated field.
“I got to talk about a little what I am studying at school. Obviously not too much to bore them, because it could be, but I tried to tell them there is so many doors with STEAM and its a wide spectrum. And that is why I showed up in a dress and changed to a lab coat to show girls could do it.”
Banning completed some ‘messy’ experiments to point out some of the fun aspects of science.
Each of the participants paid $20, with all the proceeds being donated to Sleep in Heavenly Peace.
County Fair Queens are required to do a community project prior to participation in the Illinois State County Fair Queen competition in Springfield every January.
