MySTEM student Josephine is a freshman in high school who centered her Action Plan on establishing a Women in STEM club at her school. With support from her mentor, the STEM Action Center, SheTech, and the Creative Lab Studio at UVU, Josephine successfully organized a STEM night that attracted over 130 participants. Josephine is dedicated to helping others develop their STEM identities and is committed to leveraging STEM to foster empowerment, professionalism, and innovation within her community.
Q1: Describe your motivation for joining mySTEM
When I decided to be a member of my STEM, I thought, wow, I get to be someone who spreads STEM all around and I get to show that to my peers and other people around me. Since it was my first year becoming a mySTEM member, I didn’t really know what I was going in for. It’s kind of like you’re watching a movie, but then you didn’t watch the trailer first so you don’t know what’s going to happen. For me, I think it was just so cool to understand and see how STEM has such a big impact on other people and how I can also have a huge impact on other people too.
Q2: Describe your action plan in detail? How did you choose this particular topic in your
project?
My Action Plan was hosting a STEM club for my school. My school is actually different from other schools because it focuses specifically on STEM. One of the weird things is that it doesn’t really have a ton of STEM clubs. So, I thought: “hey, how about let’s just start a STEM club.” I specifically chose to do something related to women in STEM, because I thought that a lot of people, and also just a lot of the careers that we have, aren’t super focused on women empowerment. I feel like that’s a really cool thing that we could start to apply. So, the club that I have is called SheTech which is an organization that is created by the Women Tech Council and there we have a lot of different opportunities like making resumes and just hosting different STEM activities. This way we can encourage more of the girls in our school to pursue and explore the themes of STEM. As well, to encourage other students in general if they also want to be in STEM too.
Q3: In what ways has your mentor contributed to the development and successful completion
of your plan? What are some ways that you feel like mentors and other scholars were able to
help you succeed?
My mentor has actually helped me a ton. Especially, because for our club we want more people, especially women in STEM, to come and talk about their careers. My mentor has helped me a lot when we’re networking and connecting with other people. She knows a ton of women in STEM who have very interesting careers. I feel like our club really needs to open our eyes to those types of experiences so then we can see what we want to do in the future.
My mentor is Emma Casey and she’s helped me a ton in that type of stuff and she’s supported me in a lot of things. Whenever I have questions, I can always ask her and she can always get me the right answer.
Additionally, in my group, we have two other people and one of the other mySTEM mentees. She’s super productive with her time and I’m so amazed by that. I think that’s such a cool thing. She is teaching a lot of robotics lessons and doing all these things to include other people in STEM. I was asking her the first time I met her that if I needed any help with anything, I could just text her. I think just the support that we have at MySTEM is just so mind blowing because you would think that you have to do this all alone, but really you don’t have to because there are other people there who are willing to help you and they’re willing to put in their hand.
Which is why I really love the mySTEM program. The whole bond that we have together as a group just allows us to open up new opportunities for everyone and then we can just all connect together with our excitement of STEM.
Q4: What kind of resources did you utilize to grow your project? How did those resources
help?
I live near the Creative Labs at UVU, and it’s really accessible because we could just go pick up fun STEM kits. It was very helpful for us because we could find things that are actually fun to do for the students. Along with that, the STEM Action Center was also super helpful. They provided all of the merch and all the T-shirts for us. It was a way of promoting the STEM Action Center along with the Creative Learning Labs. Showing how much they were a big help to us. It was fun to pass out some notebooks and some stickers and tattoos to the students.
Q5: What measurable impact have you already observed as a result of your efforts? What are
your aspirations for the future of your project?
I think it was really cool because it was a huge success. Around 130 people actually participated and attended the event which was super exciting. We had a lot of fun exploring all the STEM games and all the principles. We were able to bond with each other and create a stronger STEM relationship with the peers at our school.
We are definitely hoping that we can have these same activities and bring it over to local libraries. These kits are also made for younger children, and we were thinking that we could bring it over to the libraries near us. We could also show it to little children so then they can also be interested in STEM.
For future aspirations, I think I would definitely be continuing the club for 11th and 12th graders and just hosting more activities like this so then we can open the world of STEM to more people.
Q6: Do you believe that your participation in the mySTEM program has facilitated the
growth of your STEM identity?
I feel like my STEM identity is a little bit different. When a lot of people think about STEM, they have to think: I’m going to be a mechanical engineer or I have to become something in STEM. But I personally think that’s not completely true. You can be a mechanical engineer, you can be anything you want, even if it’s in STEM or not in STEM. But, even though I don’t want to have a career in STEM, I still feel like STEM is so fascinating for me. I really enjoy biology because I love how things work and I love studying life and all the cells, and all the themes.
The mySTEM program has helped me a lot in just bonding with other people, getting to know people who are as excited about STEM as I am. I feel it allows me to say: “hey, I also really like STEM, too.” I don’t want to have a career in it, but I still love it so much because it fascinates me a ton.
