We are the STEMinists, a group of girls from Irvine High who aim to generate more participation in STEM fields by promoting the involvement of underrepresented populations in STEM areas and breaking the myth that STEM pathways are difficult and unattainable.
project need
According to a 2021 report by Pew Research Center, only 9% of all STEM workers are African American, 8% are Hispanic, and 13% are Asian, compared to a 67% white population that make up the STEM workforce. We want to do this by creating a program in which we connect students and schools with industry members and college students (especially those who graduated from our school district), particularly who are part of the underrepresented groups as well as current college students. We would like our campaign to lessen intimidating misconceptions about STEM by establishing familiarity through relatability.
Meetings
The STEMinists meet every other Thursday afterschool in the engineering classroom, supervised by Mrs. Templeton. We also conduct lunch meetings and after school Zoom meetings as needed. During these meetings, our project managers create agendas and assign the team individual tasks that need to be finished before a certain deadline.
Collaboration
Collaboration was a key factor in turning our projects and ideas into reality. The team practiced strong communication and teamwork skills to research & brainstorm projects and plan out supplies. Strong collaboration skills also allowed us to effectively communicate with the elementary schools' PTAs to establish rapport and schedule timings for our events.
While some of our members work on outreach and getting connections, others work on social media, and some work on finding or creating activities for our events. Our social media and graphic designers create recap posts for our events to increase awareness. We also piloted an initiative to highlight women in STEM through our social media.
team events/evidence
We had a total of 3 in-person events and published a newsletter. Cadence Park Astronomy Night, Irvine High Wellness Wednesday, and College Park Spring Carnival were our three in-person events.
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At Cadence Park, we accompanied telescope viewings of Jupiter and the Galilean moons with visual models through our solar system bracelets. While helping the students build their galactic creations, we shared with them cool facts about our universe to further excite them about space. With the help of the Cadence Park PTA, this event was a big success.
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At our own high school, we were welcomed by the Irvine High Youth Action Team to celebrate Women's History Month at their weekly Wellness Wednesday lunch booths. Through trivia questions about trailblazing women in STEM, we showcased diversity and representation in STEM and honored women globally.
We also collaborated with College Park to participate in their first annual Spring Carnival. We ignited awe and amazement with chemistry through DIY lava lamps and soaring enthusiasm by making straw rockets. At these events, we were able to impact and teach 200+ students about generating more participation in STEM fields by promoting the involvement of marginalized populations in STEM areas and breaking the myth that STEM pathways are too difficult.
College Park, Cadence Park, and
Wellness Wednesday Events
STEMinists Newsletter Cover
NEWSLETTER
This year, the Irvine STEMinists published our newsletter to highlight modern-day STEMinists and the latest updates in STEM world. Through this project, we aim to talk about what mass media commonly ignores, providing insight into the daily impact of women in STEM. So far we have highlighted inspiring role models such as Amanda Nguyen---reflecting on her journey through hardships and proving that not everyone's path is linear. We aim to continue this newsletter in future years and broaden its audience to have a greater impact.
This year, the STEMinists focused on providing opportunities for younger generations to "get their hands dirty" and get into STEM. To this end, we were able to successfully conduct three events, one at College Park and one at Cadence Park that brought STEM activities to the younger generation, as well as our Wellness Wednesday event that showcased the diversity in STEM to teens and young adults. At Cadence Park, over 100+ students participated in our solar system bracelets—a creative outlet for students to learn about the universe and design their own galaxies through the variety of beads. The students enjoyed this activity, and we were appreciated by the Cadence Park PTA. At College Park, for their Spring Carnival, we interacted with 100+ students to bring DIY lava lamps and straw rocket building for their Spring Carnival. We were also able to issue multiple newsletters highlighting recent, overlooked news in regards to women in STEM. Through our newsletters, we told forgotten stories and emphasized how worth the hard work and dedication is in achieving a lifelong dream. We hope that through our various projects, we inspire others to take risks and pursue their own dreams in STEM.
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In the short-term, we hope to see more students of underrepresented backgrounds take up the STEM elective pathways we have at our school (Project Lead the Way, computer science, web design) and join STEM extracurriculars such as StellarXplorers and First Robotics.
In the long-term, we want to mobilize the youth into developing a liking in STEM. For some of us, we realized our STEM journey started late, and we wish we knew of opportunities that exist in STEM before we entered high school. To this end, we hope that our events with the youth can inspire them to pursue STEM later in their lives. Through all our projects, we want to build students up to be the best version of themselves in terms of confidence, grit, and problem solving. These skills are extremely valuable when pursuing STEM, but equally valuable in any field and in life in general.
As our third year on this mission, we hoped to make some changes from last year to now. One was our digital impact, and last year we chose to tackle this through podcasts instead of our in-person speaker night from our first year. This year, we tackled it with the newsletter. However, this did not have as much of an effect as intended, because we struggled to obtain the engagement that we were hoping to achieve. So, we aim to reintegrate the in-person speaker series to our plan for future years and also considering integrating the Irvine High student body into our projects. This year, we didn't have our first event until February, so we also aim to hold earlier events in future years in the winter. Although we aim to continue working with local elementary schools, we would also like to expand the kinds of events we participate in. In previous years, our team has been consisted primarily of engineering students, and we hoped to diversify that so we could expand the kinds of activities we did with the kids. This year, we achieved this goal, and brought on astrophysicists and biologists onto the team alongside us. This allowed us to expand our events outside of just engineering to topics such as chemistry. We aim to continue this in future years to maintain a diverse range of ideas, creativity, and knowledge.