The Missing Metric in Technical Education

Meridian Parsons

Staff Writer

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Walk into any high school fabrication workshop or robotics lab, and the scene is identical. The space is dominated by the machine or products. The room is illuminated with glowing computer screens, the floor littered with sawdust and aluminum shavings, and students huddled over the fuse box debating motor capacity and Python code efficiency. This environment is designed for mechanical efficiency. But in the high-stakes realm of scientific education, something critical often gets lost in the headset: the individual behind the machine. 

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In Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics (STEAM) fields, the focus is almost exclusively on the outcome of your creation or research. The humanity, identity, and lived experience of each person building that gets left out. Now, a growing initiative in Northern Michigan, titled Voices of Youth: Aspiring Girls Engineering Relationships (VOYAGER), is working to flip that narrative. Putting the builder back at the core of the engineering process, paving the way for more accessible regional STEAM education. 

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Over the last decade, statewide efforts have successfully opened doors for young women entering STEAM. In Michigan high schools, women now account for 35% of student participants in all For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) robotics programs. On paper, that number represents a triumph for diversity and inclusion. But contextually, there is a persistent structural challenge posed. As students transition to senior leadership roles, such as drive team captains, head technicians, or pit managers, the share of young women drops sharply.

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The problem isn't a lack of technical capability. Most robotics teams will take any student regardless of their experience. The real gap here is the lack of holistic, human-centered support for female leadership in STEAM. While students are routinely handed the toolkits for mechanical assembly, they are rarely given the personal development tools and community backing they need to navigate male-dominated spaces. This is the gap that VOYAGER was created to fill. 

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On a chilled Friday night, on October 2nd, a group of young women gathered at Camp Carvella for the inaugural VOYAGER Leadership Summit. By removing students from the high-pressure environments on the shop floor, and placing them into a reflective, personalized retreat, the summit aimed to address the interpersonal dynamics of technical leadership.

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Guest speaker Arman Golrokhian, a leadership coach based in Ann Arbor, led the group through an interactive session designed to help individuals find their own definition of success, in order to be fulfilled rather than just stereotypically “successful.” Rather than focusing on large-scale immediate changes, he addressed the value in experimenting and reflecting on personal day-to-day experiences. 

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The summit proved the value in taking time to build relationships; when given designated space to lead as they are, the most self-assured young women can transform from quiet contributors to confident leaders. While summits like VOYAGER create powerful momentum, sustained change requires additional support for a permanent infrastructure. That is where local educational leaders are stepping in to scale the model. 

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Northwest Educational Services, an institution that encompasses 16 public school districts, and is dedicated to improving student learning,children’s special needs support programs, aiming to “maximize services and resources on a regional scale” is currently evaluating the acquisition and development of a state-of-the-art regional robotics center in the greater Traverse City area. Designed to serve over 12 area schools across Grand Traverse and surrounding counties, this centralized facility would consolidate advanced manufacturing tools, full-sized practice arenas, and a collaborative environment for a dozen teams, all under one roof. 

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For smaller schools in northern Michigan, a shared facility is truly a game changer. Rural schools frequently face limited funding, cramped corners, and a smaller workforce, putting them at a distinct disadvantage compared to better-equipped downstate competitors. One shared facility gives rural and under-resourced teams the same year-round access to regulation practice fields, CNC equipment, and advanced fabrication machines. The proposed centralized hub allows programs like VOYAGER to thrive. Instead of young women operating in isolation on small high school rosters, where they could be the only female student in the workshop, a regional center aggregates dispersed students into a collaborative cohort. 

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This critical mass changes the social and operational dynamic completely.  Within a uniformed space, young women are no longer a statistical outlier; they become part of a visible regional network of peers. This newly found structure allows programs like VOYAGER to deliver targeted leadership development, structured peer-to-peer coaching, and deliberate self-advocacy training in real-world leadership development exercises. By embedding human-centered support directly into the shared facility, the initiative ensures that female leadership is cultivated alongside technical competency. 

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This integrated human-centered approach relies on proven precedents in Michigan's higher education, like The Kettering University FIRST Robotics Community Center in Flint. Opened in 2014, Kettering was the first university in the nation to build a dedicated campus-hosted robotics facility, specifically designed for area middle and high school teams. Rather than treating pre-college robotics as an isolated extracurricular, Kettering integrated high school teams into its academic ecosystem. High school students build on the regulation fields, utilizing state-of-the-art technology, but most importantly, they get to work alongside Kettering undergraduate student managers and university faculty. 

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Bringing a similar collegiate framework to Northwestern Michigan College through Northwestern Education Services creates a powerful bridge between secondary education, college education, and the regional industry. Much like Kettering's model where college undergrads mentor high schoolers, a regional center in TC could allow the opportunity to have NMC college students as well as collegiate engineers and local professional women in stem to serve directly as mentors. For young women in VOYAGER, seeing female engineers lead technical subteams demystifies post-secondary engineering and provides clear, reachable lines of sight, inspiring high schoolers for their future college and career possibilities. Kettering demonstrates that centralized machinery levels the playing field for under-resourced schools. The regional Traverse City hub brings that same model north, ensuring that a rural team's competitive potential isn't capped by their local school’s tax base. The center that Kettering owns feeds directly into regional co-op programs and engineering firms. A northwestern Michigan hub creates one unified location for local manufactures, automation experts and engineering businesses to sponsor teams, deliver workshops, and recruit local talent. FIRST alumni constantly enter engineering, computer science and skilled trades, feeding the exact employers who sponsor these teams currently. 

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Building a competitive world class machine will always be the cornerstone of STEAM education. But as northern Michigan looks toward the future, we must focus on shifting back to the humans behind the robots. By pairing human-centered leadership initiatives like VOYAGER with the physical footprint of a regional robotics center for northern Michigan, we establish a new standard for technical education. It is an educational ecosystem that recognises a fundamental truth. That the most critical element in any engineering laboratory isn't the machine; it's the students building it.