K-12 STEM Center's Monthly
Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access (IDEA) Team Newsletter
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Greetings to you all!
This introduction of the third issue of the newsletter should be titled, “Navigating Zoom in Shared Office Spaces” as the IDEA team and the Center have all returned to campus this month. As August comes to a close, we all have been using this month to prepare our programs for the fall semester and adjust to wearing non-stretchy pants for 8-hour workdays.
All jokes aside, we are all acclimating to our new normal: commuting in traffic again, masks on all day, handwashing every 30 minutes, sanitizing common spaces, and locking your computer screen every time you leave your desk.
If I were to choose a single word that best summarizes August, I would pick: transitional.
As we transition from a virtual summer to an in-person fall, the IDEA team will continue to ensure that we at the Center are taking into consideration what IDEA actually represents, and how our programs take shape while implementing inclusion, diversity, equity, and access throughout the process of planning and managing our programs. Whether it takes shape in the form of training for volunteers, translating flyers so that they are available in English and Spanish, or providing mentorship for underrepresented minority students, the IDEA team will strive for our impact to match the intentions we have in the work that we do.
As always, I encourage the sharing of this newsletter to friends and colleagues who would find interest in the work that the IDEA Team does at Viterbi's K-12 STEM Center.
With that said, Fight on!
Anne Areta
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Project Reviews and Future Plans |
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Summer High School Intensive in Next-Generation Engineering (SHINE) Recap |
On July 30th, newest IDEA team member Monica Lopez and Co-Director Katie Mills hosted a research poster session for all 58 SHINE 2021 participants. This event gave students from local and non-local high schools an opportunity to SHINE and be in the spotlight. This article will give you a glimpse of how impactful this summer program truly was.
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High School Pilots Turn Toward Aerospace Research |
We celebrated National Aviation Day earlier this month! We presented "High School Pilots Turn Toward Aerospace Research" This K-12 STEM Center Article highlights three SHINE 2021 participants. This quick and fun read will inspire you to dreams as the sky's the limit.
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What is Happening Now for SHINE |
SHINE is offering a Back-to-School virtual event to help SHINE 2020 and 2021 participants jump-start your school year on a positive note. During the event, they will have SHINE alumni host an activity to help them make goals for the year. We want to help students plan for success.
In addition, SHINE is launching a College Workshop series to support participants during college application season. We want to minimize external and internal factors that prevent students from applying. We acknowledge that college applications can be a barrier to some students so we want to demystify the process and help students make informed decisions.
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Managing MESA 8th Graders |
We are currently reviewing data from 8th-grade students in our MESA program which follows them to our feeder high schools. Tracking their movement from middle school to high school allows us to review any potential gaps in learning and predict possible outcomes. We are aiming to create preventative plans to evade challenges. |
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MESA's Efforts for September |
MESA's Academic Coordinator and newest IDEA team member Alexandra Guiterrez seeks to collaborate with other colleagues at the Center to create flyers that are comprehensible in Spanish and English, ensuring access to access while creating more equitable pathways across the board. She also plans to research recruitment strategies that will help reach target audiences in our programs, such as presenting and hosting African American parent workshops and Latin(e)(x) parent workshops.
Unfamiliar with Latine versus Latinx? Click on the link below to learn about the differences between the two terms.
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Center Support for Student Organizations |
Jennifer and Anne have been working in collaboration with MESA Director, Ben Louie and student organization "Society of Women in Engineering" (SWE) as support in planning various events (college and career panels, technical workshops, etc) for the students K-12 Center serves. Specifically, there will be opportunities for SWE mentors to pair with Hawthorne Math and Science Academy students in order to provide a role model that these high school students can connect with directly. In addition, our combined efforts will extend towards the targeted elementary schools that our Center serves. Our hope is to inspire these young women to see themselves in STEM through engaging, hands-on activities, as well as visually seeing and talking to USC women engineering students.
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Suggested Reading for the Month |
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Journals of Latinos and Education |
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Navigating the Intersectionality of Race/Ethnicity, Culture, and
Gender Identity as an Aspiring Latina STEM Student
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A diverse workforce is greatly needed in the fields of science, technology, engineering, mathematics
(STEM), yet many students of color are excluded from these opportunities. One of the primary groups
where we see this disparity is Latina students. This research applies a lens of intersectionality to the lived experiences of a group of Latina high school students who participated in a year-long Latina STEM Fellowship (LSF) to explicate how these experiences contributed to their identity construction.
To read more about this research, click on the link below.
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Work in Progress: Overview of an Interdisciplinary Online Education Workshop for Female Hispanic Pre-College Students to Enroll in STEM Academic Programs
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STEM Education Workshop: Yes SHE Can |
This paper presents an overview of a STEM Education Workshop that was implemented during the summer of 2020 by a new university intervention program to support the career decision-making of Hispanic female pre-college students interested in STEM professional and academic programs.
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STEM Identity in High School Girls |
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The Role of All-Female STEM Spaces in Encouraging High School Girls to Pursue STEM |
The research in this study suggests that all-girls spaces such as extracurricular STEM clubs for girls reinforce
recognition and support the development of STEM identity in high school girls. Girls developed feelings of belonging in STEM which, research shows, lead to motivation, engagement, increased academic performance, and increased intent to persevere in STEM fields. Further, girls’ experiences in all-girl STEM clubs allowed them to feel a degree of immunity to the
negative effects of gender bias.
To learn more about this study, click on the link below.
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Mentoring Correlates to Characteristics of University K-12 Outreach Programs: Survey Findings |
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Mentoring Proves to Ensure Success in STEM for Underrepresented Miniorities |
This paper presents the analysis of a survey that was situated within a larger study that seeks to examine undergraduate STEM identity development concerning mentoring in K-12 STEM outreach programs. A first step towards achieving this larger goal is to better understand if and how mentoring occurs in these programs. To this end, the survey analysis presented here focuses on the research question:
Do K-12 STEM outreach program characteristics differ between programs that are and
are not believed to foster mentoring relationships between university and K-12 students?
Go further on this topic and click on the link below.
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Lastly, we at the Center want to give special thanks to Betty Lou Gross, Fiserve and James Carter Esquire, James Carter & Associates LLC for their support of the STEM Center's efforts to increase engagement and outreach of African American students.
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USC Viterbi K-12 STEM Center | University of Southern California | Website
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