With a passion for curiosity, learning, and exploration, Kelley Hardie teaches her Greene County Girl Scouts a love for science!
Joining Girl Scouts as a volunteer in 2020, Kelley believed in the potential for Girl Scouts to take on the world of STEM. When Kelley’s daughter asked to join Girl Scouts during the COVID-19 pandemic, she saw the benefits that Girl Scouts had to offer. In her five years of volunteering, she has already seen her Girl Scouts grow and learn in many ways.
Kelley says, “Within a social context, Girl Scouts was an amazing benefit for my daughter because we started the troop in 2020. So during the global pandemic, when most kids were craving that socialization, especially in her young years of kindergarten, we were able to provide that in a group setting, and that was really, really meaningful.”
“Learning is fun. You learn every day. You can have many passions. You don’t just have to enjoy one thing. Your interests can be so vast, and that’s what makes you, you.”
—Kelley Hardie
Kelley credits her troop’s range of diverse events as the main reason for the growth of her Girl Scouts. “To see their leadership skills blossom, the way they communicate and interact with one another and with the other troop leaders, it’s been amazing. I think it’s because we don’t just focus on one area. We offer such a diverse set of educational learning opportunities and interests and skills. It piques their interests in different ways,” she says.
Many of those interests and skills are for the STEM fields. Her troop meets at Waynesburg University where Kelly is the Dean of Students. “We have the ability to have our chemistry instructors meet with the Girl Scouts . . . And talk with them about how science is important, not just wholistically but as a female, and what that means to enter this world of science.”
For Kelley, it is the experience of having hands-on learning that makes Girl Scout programs exciting for the troop. She says, “Those connections and relationships that they’re creating now are going to last forever. They’re always going to remember the first time that they were exposed to a university science lab. And meeting a university professor and being in awe at the experiments that they were able to create. That’s what’s meaningful. That’s what’s memorable.”
The experiences in STEM have lasted in the memories of her Girl Scouts, especially the science experiment that Kelley calls “The Screaming Gummy Bear,” when a science professor expanded the head of a gummy bear until the candy made a loud scream. “We did that program two years ago, and they still talk about the science experience today that they were able to recreate,” Kelley says.
Kelley wants every Girl Scout to be excited about learning. She explains, “Learning is fun. You learn every day. You can have many passions. You don’t just have to enjoy one thing. Your interests can be so vast, and that’s what makes you, you. We all have different interests, and we need to be open-minded to those different interests just to experience those things for the first time.”
Kelley looks forward to many more years with her daughter and her Girl Scout troop, watching them all grow, explore their interests, and find their passions. “And I am just so thankful that my daughter suggested this opportunity because she and I are able to share this experience together,” she concludes.
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