Campolindo seniors Suraya Mathai-Jackson and Rebecca Ying and junior Vivian Wang started Stepping into STEM, an organization that aims to “promote diversity in the STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics] fields,” according to the club’s Instagram page.
Mathai-Jackson said that “there are a lot of clubs and programs at the high school level to increase diversity in STEM, but we wanted to focus on developing that interest a little bit earlier because by the time people enter high school, a lot of them already have a set idea of what they’re interested in.” This effort is mainly targeted towards increasing representation in STEM, particularly amongst women.
Mathai-Jackson, Ying, and Wang started Stepping into STEM in December of 2022, but have faced logistical challenges. Ying described that “at the beginning, we wanted to advertise to elementary schools so we could teach at [their] campuses.” However, these attempts proved unsuccessful due to operational issues, so the group moved to the Lafayette Library. They’ve received support from the Lafayette Library and the DEIB grant, which helps them fund their lessons.
“Lessons are mostly 75-minute workshops with a presentation and an interactive demonstration,” Wang said. At their first lesson in January, a strawberry DNA extraction workshop, presenters seniors Audrey Sakamoto and Hanna Birdsong “talked about the mechanics behind DNA, how we’re going to extract strawberry DNA, and how it works. Then [the participants] actually did the extraction,” Wang described.
Stepping into STEM is returning to the Lafayette Library in February for an environmental science workshop. Going forward, the club hopes to target more 3-5th graders through lessons at elementary schools, additional libraries, and youth groups.
