By Emma Mason
STEM careers aren’t only for men anymore.
Recently
the STEM school has started an after-school program run by the school principal,
Hope Strickland, called, “DRSS W.i.S.E.” W.i.S.E stands for Women in Science and
Engineering. It is an organization in the STEM school that tries to encourage
girls to get into Science and Engineering careers.
There
are 30 girls in the organization so far. There are classes every Thursday once
a month. The program is looking for older girls to join the class, so they can
mentor the younger girls. Every
class there is a new guest speaker. The guest speakers range from graduate female
STEM students to women in STEM professions. One guest speaker who has visited the class so far is a computer scientist, Carly Rolfes, from Wright State University, who is also an intern at the US Air Force Research Lab's Gaming Research Integration for Learning Laboratory. Another guest was Chemical Engineering professor, Dr. Amy Ciric, from the University of Dayton. Lt. Liu, an astronautical engineering graduate student at the Air Force Institute of Technology, also visited to talk with the students.
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| Lt. Liu of AFIT speaks to the students at the montly WiSE Meeting. |
What
inspired Mrs. Strickland to start the program was her
realization that there were not many girls in the computer science and engineering
classes. Boys filled up the class instead. By the end of the year, Mrs.
Strickland wants the girls to take away that they can get into STEM professions.
She wants girls to get excited to enter these professions and to better
understand what they need to study and major in during their college careers in order to achieve their goals. She wants the girls to
take the time to support each other and get comfortable with science.
This
could be the start of a new generation. There need to be more classes like this
in school. Classes that can encourage girls to get into careers that in the past
they wouldn’t have even thought about doing. With the help of this class, STEM careers
would no longer be mostly for boys. Hopefully, it would be equally for both men
and women and self-confidence will spread through every gender.
