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The 12-year-old girl said she has found science to be "kind of boring."
But that mind-set changed in recent months as she joined a team at Pilgrim Park Middle School designing and building a new magnetic board game for a national toy- and game-making contest.
"I like making things," she said.
Organizers of the event run by Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, liked what Conway and her peers created. The six-student team was selected as one of 111 teams across the country out of 400 applicants to advance to the national finals May 17 at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Virginia.
The Toy Challenge event, in its fifth year, is designed to increase middle school students' interest in science and related careers, especially for girls. At least half of each team must be girls.
Pilgrim Park in the Elmbrook School District was the only school in Wisconsin to enter the contest. Three Pilgrim teams submitted game proposals - two sixth-grade teams and one eighth grade, and one was chosen for the finals. Parent organizer Dian Zandi said the other sixth-grade team, on which her son Zach participated, was disappointed but is already planning to "brainstorm on the playgrounds" what toy they can invent next year.Zandi said the students had fun using their imaginations to create a board game they would like to play. Their game involves moving around a board trying to conquer five of seven continents without running out of food.
"They're able to use their imaginations to think of something rather than being told what to do," she said.
Elmbrook wants to bolster its focus on science, technology, engineering and math, and on getting girls to pursue male-dominated fields.
Colleen Hackney, events manager for Sally Ride Science, which runs the Toy Challenge and other science camps and programs, said research has shown that in elementary school, boys and girls tend to share equal interest in science.
But in middle school, girls start to focus on other areas, with more boys enrolling in math and science electives and clubs, she said.
Some studies have attributed it to subtle and overt societal messages, from the lack of female scientists and mathematicians pictured in textbooks to the stereotypes of nerdy male engineers in movies and media.
Girls drawn to science
But Debbie Ward, a Pilgrim Park teacher for 16 years who worked with parent volunteers on the Toy Challenge, said her experience runs counter to that research.
"I think the girls' interest is increasing. Interest is high," she said.
One reason may be a rise in science opportunities, particularly hands-on ones.
"I recently took my eighth-graders to a live open heart surgery," Ward said.
Students were able to observe and ask questions while watching the surgery performed on a 73-year-old woman via a telecommunications system set up at the Milwaukee Public Museum.
There were a limited number of seats available, so students had to sign up. Fifteen of the 28 who attended were girls, Ward said.
Fifteen Pilgrim Park students competed on the school's first Science Olympiad team five years ago. This year, 75 students joined teams. Half were girls.
The experience is not universal: Mostly boys signed up for a Robotics/ Lego league. Girls' enrollment in industrial technology and transportation and energy classes remains low, said Pilgrim Park Principal Don Galster.
Academic performance in science is improving as a result of teachers' efforts, Galster said. He said the number of Pilgrim's students scoring as advanced in science and math on state tests has increased in the last four years, while advanced scores statewide in those subjects have stagnated.
The six students advancing to the toy finals - Conway, Maddy Janick, Andy Kalenak, George Marn, Linn Polyak and Leo Spanuello - devoted hours creating their game during lunch, study hours and after school. It is not counted in their classes.
Their game, called Rise of the Empires, includes about 100 message cards that help or hurt players' efforts to conquer continents. ("Rats with infected fleas cause plague. Remove four of your land chips.") Battles can be waged with an eight-sided die.
The students had a $200 budget. They came up with the idea to have a magnetic board and pieces, so it can be moved during game breaks without disrupting all the small pieces.
"You can even play it upside down," Kalenak said.
The game's logo, drawn by Kalenak, will be stamped on all the game pieces, which the students originally brainstormed could be metal washers - until they realized how heavy all that metal would make the game box.
They bought tiny plastic food pieces on eBay for less than $4. They used clay to mold sword game pawns.
They didn't always agree and had to learn to delegate and collaborate, Zandi said. They wrote an engineering log book to track ideas, solutions and failures.
"It was fun to be creative," Marn said.
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