CGIF Funds STEM Camps for Girls in Puerto Rico 

Zirconia, the most durable naturally occurring ceramic, can be found in dental implants, ceramic glazes, and refractory coatings. It is so strong that even scissors can be made out of it. The strength of Zirconia resembles the strength in the women of Puerto Rico, according to O. Marcelo Suárez, Ph.D.

“At some point we had, in engineering, something like 37% female (students). That’s huge,” he says. “And that number went down, perhaps after the hurricane (Maria). So we felt we could intervene and do something positive in that sense. And that’s how we came up with this idea of this Zirconia camp.”

Suárez is a professor and coordinator of the materials science and engineering program at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez (UPRM). He is also the faculty mentor for the UPRM Material Advantage student chapter. Suárez received project grant funding from the Ceramic and Glass Industry Foundation (CGIF) for projects in 2018, 2019, and 2023, totaling $17,600 in support.

The Zirconia camp, first funded in 2019 with nearly $10,000 from the CGIF, is a day-long camp aimed at ninth through eleventh grade high school girls. The day is filled with seminars featuring women who are organizational leaders from nearly every engineering discipline, but the goal is to foster student interest in ceramic and glass engineering.

Suárez came up with the name of the camp based on what he saw in his own community in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017, which is known as the worst natural disaster in Puerto Rico’s history.

“When we got hit by Hurricane Maria, the first responders here were your neighbors. They were the ones helping out their own neighbors and very important: women were at the forefront of that,” he says. “That was the inspiration for Zirconia. Why is it Zirconia? Because in my class—I teach a ceramics course—Zirconia is considered the toughest ceramic.”

Students also received pieces of Zirconia to take home and wear as a reminder of their experience as well as a reminder of the strength that women embody in their communities.

Claralys Hernández, who graduated from UPRM in 2021 with a bachelor’s in chemical engineering, is now a graduate student and was the Material Advantage student chapter president in 2019. She returned this year to revive the chapter after it became inactive due to the coronavirus pandemic. The hope is that events like the Zirconia camp will foster more female student interest in STEM.

“We’re trying to make it more appealing for the students, and the end goal is to motivate them to pursue a university career or profession,” Hernández says. “So we are trying to bring them the most information and opportunities that we can.”

Hernández notes that the camps have not only exposed more girls to STEM opportunities, but that they showed personal growth as well. 

“There were a couple of them that were so shy at the beginning and in the end, they came to me and said, ‘This was more than I imagined,’” Hernández says.

The 2019 Zirconia camp hasn’t been the only opportunity for student outreach at UPRM. In 2018, the CGIF funded a one-day camp during the academic semester for ninth to eleventh grade students and their parents, dubbed “the Bulldog camp” after UPRM’s bulldog mascot. The CGIF again supported this project, and it helped open the door for the Zirconia camp. 

In fall 2023, Suárez and the UPRM Material Advantage chapter will be hosting “The Future through the Looking Glass: A Zirconia Camp Experience.” The upgraded Zirconia camp experience aims to serve more than 50 female students and their parents, and the intent is that students will be able to utilize UPRM laboratory space as well. 

One of the perks of hosting the Zirconia Camp at UPRM is that the university is one of the top producers of Hispanic engineers, according to the American Society of Engineering Education. The College of Engineering at UPRM is also the largest college in Puerto Rico.

Suárez and the Material Advantage students are also trying to engage two municipality islands off the east coast of Puerto Rico, Vieques and Culebra. Hernández, who is from the east side of the island, knows about the lack of opportunities there.

“The experience or the information I got was from my family or my cousins that were in college at that time, so I didn’t have the opportunity to be in this kind of activity,” she says. “So I didn’t know what science fields were available for study. I didn’t know about material science, that material science was a field, or that there was polymers engineering or ceramics.” 

In order to foster more awareness about materials, the 2023 Zirconia camp will also go hand-in-hand with a Ceramics and Glass Day Celebration, featuring exhibitions and demonstrations at the UPRM campus general library. However, Hurricane Fiona in fall 2022 almost interfered with the planning for this year, as Suárez and many others found themselves isolated from the world without electricity for extended periods of time. 

“I sent an email to the foundation saying well, ‘Look guys, I cannot do much here. So wait for me,’” Suárez says. “And they were very kind to give us the full $5,000 that we asked. I’m grateful for that. Really, really grateful for that.”

Despite the challenges that Puerto Rico and its surrounding municipalities have faced in recent years, the university still holds strong, especially with the help of powerful women in STEM. 

“I think this is a really good initiative to demonstrate to them what they can do and that women can pursue STEM careers and have success,” Hernández says. “I will say that the mission of the CGIF is really aligned with what we are doing, so we are really glad that we got assigned those funds to make these activities.”

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