The Women In STEM club is a student-led club founded by sophomores Vaishnavi Ramu and Hana Stitt. Their advisor is Mrs. Hofferberth. It was started by the duo in their freshmen year around November. Though it wasn’t a big success last year, Vaishnavi and Hana decided to try again, this time at main campus. The first meeting of the Women In STEM club was held on November 19. The first meeting was simply an overview of what was going to occur in the club this year and to get a good idea about what people were interested in. Afterwards, I sat down with the leaders to ask about their club.
The Q&A is as follows:
Q: Okay, so first question, this is for both of you, what inspired you to create this club?
V: So, midway through freshman year when I first came up with the idea, I realized that women weren’t really represented in STEM fields. And you’ll see this sentiment explored a lot, during our club meetings and I mean, it’s all around you. If you go to engineering classes or if you go to the cybersecurity classes, you won’t see that many women, and I think that’s really a shame, because I feel like there’s a lot of women out there who really would like to explore these fields but they don’t really know how to…. I just wanna show how wide and expansive STEM is.
H: Yeah, it was originally to help Vaishu, and I just wanna support her, but through that I did see more and more that women are so underrepresented, especially–it’s in all of these fields but I was thinking of the example specifically, like scientists. I feel like when you think of famous scientists, you’re gonna think of like Einstein, Fermi, or Darwin. And then I feel like the only female one you really think of is Marie Curie and it’s so sad that there are so many of these like brilliant female scientists but there’s only one that people can name. That just made me think about it, and how much I wanna help empower the women in our school to follow their passions in STEM.
Q: Wow. So who is this club for? I know you guys already said this but…
V: Yeah, it’s just for all the girls and women out there who need a push in the right direction to pursue STEM.
H: I mean, I feel like it’s just more about exploring what you wanna do. If this club makes you feel like or realize that you hate STEM, then that’s a good thing too. But, if you’re here and you find some sort of niche career that you only found because you are here, and you wanna go into that, I feel like that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re just trying to help people find out what they wanna do within STEM or out of it even.
Q: What are you hoping to achieve with this club?
V: As Hana said earlier, we’re just trying to help people find their career and what they’re passionate about.This is coming from my own experience, but when I was younger, I was pigeon holed into becoming a doctor. I felt like that was my only career path and that was just something that– was the only option for me. And then I realized how much goes into engineering and how many different types of engineering, I found the one that I love, and I wanna help people have that similar experience because I feel like a lot of people.. a lot of people only know of like the few surface careers.
H: There are so many different aspects of STEM that are so cool and I just kinda wanna show everyone that.
V: And I also wanna tell people out there, even if you know what you like and if you know that you wanna go into medicine, this club is still for you. It’s not just about finding who you are, but finding who you are alongside other people who are like you.
Q: Last question: What do you hope that people, members that come, what do you hope they will come away with after your club?
V: Genuinely just some clarity about what they want to do for their future. If they can find out, maybe narrowing down what kind of major they wanna go into or find specifically about what they wanna go into, or being encouraged to explore what they wanna go into. It’s about your future and finding out what you like.
H: Yeah, I was thinking that, and also what I kinda want is for people to be motivated to get into what they want, just because it’s often really daunting. Especially if there’s not similar people to you in these things and I feel like if you see other like minded people here, you’ll be more motivated to actually like, follow your passions in the future as well. Just, be motivated, get some clarity, have fun.
