Almost two years after creating an educational program for young girls, the founder and Loyola University New Orleans alum is proud of the progress so far.

Flor Serna, A’15, is the founder and executive director of Electric Girls. The program is designed to teach leadership skills to young girls through electronics and computer programming.

Activities within the program incorporate learning aspects of the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The program is partnered with certain local schools which hold after-school, in-school and summer programs.

Serna started the Electric Girls in the spring of 2015, her senior year at Loyola. The idea sparked when she decided to create a contract degree for her studies at Loyola, creating her own major of music technology.

Serna’s major required her to spend most of her time in Loyola’s recording studio, where she first realized she was different from the other students studying there.

“I was puzzled that I was the only female recording engineer,” Serna said. “I realized that was not unique to Loyola, but that was the case worldwide. Across the board, audio engineering is one of the most male-dominated fields, academically and professionally.”

Serna made it her mission to find an answer to her own question: “How can we get girls to stop saying and believing they’re worse than boys at math?”

Hope Clark, Electric Girls director of communications, teamed up with Serna and the rest of the Electric Girls team to solve the problem. Clark is an environmental science junior at Loyola and has been a part of the Electric Girls team for a year.

“I want the future to have a lot of female influence,” Clark said. “I think that the more women in powerful positions in science, the better the future will be.”

Susan Mendez’s daughter, Karmin Naquin, is currently enrolled in the Electric Girls program. Mendez said her daughter has had a great experience and is learning new things.

“Programs like these are important because they inspire girls to think outside the box,” Mendez said.

Serna said the program is expanding and she is looking to recruit more members of the growing Electric Girls team. She is especially proud that Electric Girls is able to provide scholarships to families who are interested in the program, but are unable to afford it. She is excited for what the future has in store.

“The kids are awesome. They are going to dictate the way the program runs and give me input about what they want to do,” Serna said.

The next five-week session for girls in the program will begin in a few weeks. The camp will also host six sessions throughout this upcoming summer.