By Rachel Konrad
The Associated Press

Nicole Koch (left) and Janine Autra, both 11, take part in a science lab last month at IBM offices in San Jose, Calif. (Associated Press photo) | ZOOM |

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Lizzy Serrano wants to design black skateboard sneakers so cool that fellow eighth-graders would gladly fork over $40 to buy them.

Her "Half-Pipes" would include an overstuffed foam tongue - an antidote to the complaints of hipsters who wedge tube socks into Vans and Converses to give them a fashionable puffiness.

Great idea, especially for a 12-year-old, who might make it big one day as a marketing consultant to the likes of Nike.

But behind every good product is a great deal of science. That's the point of the IBM-sponsored tech camp that Lizzie attended, similar to ones that hundreds of girls nationwide will attend this summer.

The camps expose girls to a range of technical professions - from industrial design to genetics - and encourage them to pursue degrees in science, math and engineering.

Proponents hope the girls will eventually return to the companies and narrow a growing gender gap in the male-dominated tech industry. Critics, however, question such camps' effectiveness.

The percentage of women in the tech work force dropped to 34.9 percent in 2002 from a high of 41 percent in 1996, according to the Information Technology Association of America. Women earned just 22 percent of computer science and engineering undergraduate degrees in 2000, according to IBM research.

To counter the trend, the Girl Scouts launched a television, radio and print campaign this year, sponsored by Intel. "Girls Go Tech" ads depict girls discussing math, science and technology with humorously clueless parents. The ads note that most girls begin to lose interest in math and science by about 12.

Girl Scouts senior vice president Sharon Hussey says efforts to get women into technical fields mirror 1960s and '70s efforts to boost the number of women in medical and law schools, where ratios of men to women now approach parity.

The women engineers acting as counselors at IBM's camp in Silicon Valley also try to counter the trend.

In the Cinderella Project, counselors required Lizzy and about 50 other campers ages 11 to 13 to build shoes that fit a list of technical specifications, including foot biometrics, gait cycles and soles reinforced with prismatic cells.

"Fashion design isn't as important as construction and mechanics," said software engineer Angela Rayborn, 30, who whipped out a ruler and helped Lizzy build prisms.

IBM, which is expanding its 5-year-old "Excite!" program to 30 cities worldwide this summer, runs one of the best-known programs aimed at getting girls interested in technology. Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and other technology bellwethers sponsor similar educational and mentoring programs.

Texas Instruments launched a camp this summer teaching advanced placement physics to 50 girls in Dallas. Intel's popular "Geek Chic" program places third-grade girls with mentors for several days in the chipmaker's labs and offices near Portland, Ore.

Yet because many programs strive for long-term mentoring relationships - and none guarantees results - proponents worry that corporate America, driven by quarterly earnings, might lack the patience necessary to groom kids for jobs they won't enter for a decade.

Each IBM camp costs only about $7,000, but that doesn't include the hundreds of hours per year that employees, including some senior executives, volunteer.

Kara Helander of New York-based Catalyst, which tracks women executives, worries that the camps promote professions such as engineering but don't encourage women to strive for technology's senior ranks. Women make up less than 10 percent of technology's highest echelon, by some estimates.

Camps should encourage higher education in all disciplines, said Helander, whose organization tracks 75 tech executives in 29 companies.