Without the help of a microphone, the tiny 13-year old Sunnyvale resident, who had to stand to the side of the podium in order to be seen, set the pace for a night of enthusiastic presentations.

Hoang was there to speak about her experiences at last summer's Tech Trek camp, a weeklong program at Stanford University that offers seventh-grade girls a chance to explore math and science and how it applies to their lives.

Hoang is one of the hundreds of girls in the region who have been encouraged to work with math and science by the actions of the association, and more specifically, those of its Educational Equity subcommittee.

"[Tech Trek] is an opportunity every middle school girl should try to go to," Hoang said, "because it's guaranteed to change your life."

Peggy Stephen, Tech Trek coordinator for the branch, said one of the primary goals of the program, and the branch, is to show young girls that there are jobs out there that use science and math. Stephen herself has a degree in microbiology from UC-Berkeley and spent nine years as a Navy pilot, with time served in the Philippines, Guam and Antarctica.

"It's important to provide young ladies at this age with plenty of role models so they can see the possibilities that are open to them," she said.

Stephen said she might have missed out on fulfilling her own lifelong dream of flying into the unknown as she did in Antarctica because—when she was growing up—there were no women in the fields she was interested in.

It's the void that Stephen and the rest of the AAUW are seeking to fill by encouraging girls to explore any field they're interested in.

To publicize those efforts, the Educational Equity section of the Sunnyvale-Cupertino branch held an informational meeting on Nov. 12 in Murphy Park to share information on three programs.

According to Susan Christensen, one of the branch's program chairs and a part of the Educational Equity section, each of the three programs is designed to encourage girls to stay involved and interested in topics and fields associated with math and science.

Christensen said that a number of social influences lead to many girls shying away from math and the sciences in favor of studies like creative writing and art. She said that at the middle school level, many girls become more aware of people watching them and judging them—especially boys—so they may turn away from topics where a definite "right" or "wrong" answer is present.

She also said that some studies have shown that math and science teachers tend to call on male students more frequently at those ages as well.

But until that point, Christensen said, "Young kids pretty much think they can do anything, but that starts to slow down at junior-high age," she said. "We want to keep it going."

When Christensen was in middle school in the mid-1980s, she took part in the program called Expanding Your Horizons. For that program, anywhere between 800 and 1,000 middle school students attend daylong workshops at San José State University, working on math- and science-related projects.

"It's very exciting. Each workshop that you attend is more fascinating than the last," she said. "It opened my eyes to what else was out there that I had no concept of at the time."

For the Tech Trek program at Stanford University, seventh-grade students like Hoang are accepted on a scholarship basis after a series of interviews and selections. The students take part in activities similar to those of the Horizons students, but they do it for a week and stay on campus to get a feel for college life.

"[Tech Trek] made me feel a lot more interested in science and math than I was before," said Audrey Ragsac, 13, an eighth-grader at San Jose's Quimby Oaks Middle School. "I had always thought that science and math were important because out in the real world, there are so many things that require you to know those things."

The last program is called Girls for a Change, a grouping project in which girls from the same region are put together in groups to work on problems they identify in their community.

Girls in this program work with a network of professional women to identify a problem, and plan and implement a community service project in their area. Their network of women resources includes activists, public relations specialists, local elected officials and a number of other women, providing anything the girls need.

Everyone who spoke at the meetings did so with visible excitement about their work, but they also shared details on the challenges presented. Christensen reflected back on past experiences with overfilled elevators at San José State University, and both Hoang and Ragsac lamented the early wake-up times, crowded bathrooms and hard mattresses of their week in the Stanford Dorms, but said they'd go back again if given the chance.

"If you can go to Tech Trek, go, because it's worth all your hard work," Ragsac said.

For more information on any of the association's programs or services, call Susan Christensen at 408.204.6762.