Illinois Tollway hosts Girl Scouts for STEM activities on Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day
2025-03-05
Using everyday objects like pennies, paper, spaghetti noodles and marshmallows, Illinois Tollway engineers introduced visiting Girl Scouts to common construction and design principles during activities intended to further the Scouts’ interest in engineering careers.
More than two dozen Scouts participated in lessons at the Tollway that included projects like building paper bridges held in place by paper clips to gauge how much weight the structures could bear—with pennies being placed across the spans to test their strength.
The visit to the agency’s Downers Grove headquarters marked “Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day,” an annual national event designed to encourage girls to consider careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.
“We support events like this one to inspire the next generation of young women to pursue challenging, rewarding careers in engineering and other technology-related fields by introducing them to the exceptional women who plan design and supervise construction of our roads and bridges,” said Illinois Tollway Executive Director Cassaundra Rouse. “These activities offered the Scouts a chance to test their critical thinking, problem-solving and decision-making skills, which are just some of the abilities our engineers use every day.”
Other activities included teams of Scouts competing to build the tallest, stand-alone tower using only dry spaghetti noodles and a length of tape—with the additional requirement that the tower had to be strong enough to support a marshmallow at the tip of its spire.
Engineers also used ping pong balls on a wooden track as a stand-in for a road to demonstrate how the Tollway uses its SmartRoad technology to help divert traffic around crashes and avoid secondary collisions by alerting drivers to closed or blocked lanes ahead of them. The Scouts then were given a tour of the Tollway’s Traffic Operations Center to watch in real-time as staffers used that technology to keep traffic moving on the Tollway system.
Other activities included demonstrating how the Tollway uses a brine solution to help reduce the amount of road salt from draining off pavements and flowing into nearby streams and wetlands.
Among the lessons learned by the Scouts during their visit? Paper bridges support more pennies—up to 100 of the coins—if the paper is rolled into tube to increase its strength and load capacity.
The Tollway staff participating in the event included Deputy Chiefs of Program Implementation Cindy Williams and Sarah Kim, Executive Project Manager Laura Thompson, Project Manager Diana Arreola, Community Relations and Outreach Manager Kelsey Passi, Senior Environmental Planner Kelsey Musich and Senior Project Manager Jill Ziegler.