Girls in Dungog High School are being shown different career paths in a new STEM oriented outreach program.
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Working with the HunterWISE outreach program, Dungog girls will be guided through a designed thinking process to help tackle real local issues, according to Gillian Manning.
"They look at all sorts of things, it could be a social issue. It's up to the girls to sit down and brainstorm the issues and then think about some solutions," Ms Manning, the STEM program's coordinator, said.
"They're supported through the process with a team of mentors from the University of Newcastle."
HunterWISE outreach is a ten week program where girls in year eight get the opportunity to work alongside STEM professionals and mentors from Newcastle University to solve local issues and develop skills in STEM.
Issues that are being addressed this year include bullying, missing the school bus and potholes in local roads.
However the most important thing it achieves is exposing girls to STEM careers that they may not have known about, according to Ms Manning.
"It's about showing girls that there is an opportunity. It's difficult to aspire to be something that you don't even know about," she said.
"I think from the school's perspective it's all about just showing the girls what opportunities available to them and helping them find out more."
For the first week of the program girls from Dungog High School travelled to the Dungog Water Waste and Water Treatment plants to hear from the female engineers who work in the plants.
This helped give the girls an idea of what different types of engineering is available for them to pursue, according to Ms Manning.
"They were able to talk to them about all the different kinds of engineering that exist, the sort of job opportunities there are for girls and the pathways that these women took," Ms Manning said.
The wastewater and treatment plant is the only excursion the girls will go on for this program, Ms Manning added.
The next step for the girls is for them to group up and choose a problem or social issue to tackle.
The impact of the program is yet to be felt, as Dungog High School has only ran it for three years meaning that the first girls who participated are currently in year 10.
Despite this, Ms Manning has seen more girls taking subjects like maths and science seriously.
The teacher that is leading the program is the science teacher Sophie Breen.
