On Saturday, March 1, UVSC will be hosting the Expanding Your Horizons conference for sixth to 12th grade girls.

"We want to make girls aware that there are career and education options they can enter into that are non-traditional for them," said Jennie Briggs, Equity Center specialist at UVSC.

Briggs said registration for girls, parents and educators is $25 each. Low-income scholarships are available for those who qualify and one parent or educator can come for free for every five girls they bring.

The conference started as a small symposium more than twenty years ago and has now grown to attract around 1,000 participants. The event has become so popular that two years ago a similar conference, Empowering Your Tomorrow, was started for boys to encourage them to continue their education.

"It started out really small," Briggs said. "It is such a cool conference. We have girls get on a bus at three in the morning from Yuma, Arizona to come to this conference."

The girls who attend the conference get to choose three workshops and hear about different career and education paths they may not have thought about before. Attendees of the conference are able to choose from 48 different workshops that include topics ranging from robotics to firefighting. There will also be six separate workshops for parents and educators on topics such as college preparation and helping girls succeed academically.

In addition to classes, girls will be able to hear from Sanchaita Datta, who was selected as one of Utah's top female executives by "Utah Business" magazine. Datta is this year's keynote speaker. There will also be interactive booths that the girls can visit to discover different fields, volunteer opportunities and community resources.

"We have interactive booths where girls can play the Xbox, do physics experiments and the UVSC aviation department brings their flight simulator," Briggs said.