Alexis Bouchard, a senior pre-engineering student at Davies Career and Technical School, became interested in engineering at a young age. In fact, it was approximately at the age of the girls she is now teaching beginner physics, robotics and engineering skills to as part of an after school program at the Cranston YMCA, for one hour, several days a week.

For her senior project at Davies, Bouchard has chosen to share her love of engineering with a group of fourth and fifth-grade girls as a means of encouraging them to pursue their interests in engineering and robotics as they move through their educational careers. As a graduate she will be shipping off on June 26 into the US Navy, but before that she hopes to leave a lasting impression on the girls she’s working with.

“They will have had 12 sessions by the end of the program,” she said. “The first week my main goal was to get to know them as individuals first and find out the kinds of things they wanted to do, before I threw a bunch of stuff at them.” So far, the girls have worked on solar powered cars, Popsicle stick bridges, and drawings of inventions that came to mind. They’re awaiting the arrival of their six-in-one robotics kits for an upcoming project, and putting finishing touches on the written descriptions of their inventions on one recent afternoon.

“There are no right or wrong answers to these ideas,” she told the girls. “Everything starts out with an idea. It doesn’t have to be something complicated or extra. Think about what problem it might solve and how it’s powered.”

She is new at this aspect of engineering, teaching it to others, but says that all is going well so far.

“I’ve never taught anything before this program,” Bouchard said. “I’ve had to change up a few of the lesson plans to fit their interests, but they seem to be enjoying it a lot.” Isabella Sawyer, a fifth-grade student involved in the program, has liked it so much that she has never missed a session.

“It’s so much fun,” she said. “On the second day we started building our Popsicle stick bridges, and it was so hard, we almost gave up. But, then we decided to build one together and we did it. Building the solar-powered cars was one of the toughest things I’ve ever done in my whole life, but I loved it.” According to the Cranston YMCA’s Andrea Champagne, all of the girls in the program are enjoying their time with Bouchard as they learn more about engineering.

“Alexis has been wonderful, very flexible, and the kids really look forward to the program,” she said. Bouchard’s program will end on March 15.