K-12 STEM Center's Monthly
Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access (IDEA) Team Newsletter
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Hello!
Last month I introduced myself to you all as the Center's newest member of the IDEA team. This month, I want to introduce our two newest members to join the IDEA team, Alexandra Gutierrez and Monica Lopez, and highlight our founding member, Jennifer Kolbauer.
It is a transitionary time at the Center. Today is our last day of summer camps, and in two weeks we return to work on campus full time. As we wrap up our summer work, we now quickly pivot to return to pre-COVID operations. The Center has always been quick on its feet, and we are all prepared to do what is necessary to continue providing equitable and inclusive STEM programs in a healthy and safe environment.
This is a monthly newsletter to keep you up to date on the work that we are doing at the Center. This newsletter can also serve as a resource guide to share with others who would be interested in the work we do.
And without further ado, I introduce to you the IDEA team!
Fight on!
Anne Areta
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Hello!
My name is Alexandra Gutierrez and I am a first generation college student. I received my B.S. in Biology from CSU Dominguez Hills. I have done research in Australia, studying invasive ant species on Norfolk Island and research at Stanford, studying microbial samples from the Colorado River Basin.
I am a MESA elective middle school teacher and para-educator. My passion has been to help youth similar to myself in underserved and underprivileged areas obtain a higher level of understanding in STEM at an earlier age so that they may excel during their higher education careers and beyond!
My goals for the fall are to provide support to the Latinx community through equitable communication, mentorship programs, and connecting Latinx leaders to younger generations. Building STEM confidence within the community can and will ensure that students not only begin their higher education journey, but also have the support and confidence to succeed in STEM.
Please feel free to reach out with any questions, comments, concerns, or just to connect!
Alexandra Gutierrez
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Hello there!
I am super excited to introduce myself.
My name is Monica Lopez. I am from Los Angeles and a first generation college student. I acquired my two Bachelor degrees from UC Irvine (UCI).
I obtained my M.Ed. in Educational Counseling from the University of Southern California (USC). I aspire to work in higher education because I strive towards equalizing educational attainment for non-traditional students.
For Fall 2021, my goals at the Center include:
- Creating and fostering a positive and welcoming climate where we value and include all.
- Attract, retain, and support diverse students in K-12 by connecting them to a K-12 STEM Center programs.
And in the future I plan to:
- Use data analysis and assessments to create a strategy plan that supports our goals.
In my free time I enjoy watching anime and painting. If you have any questions, concerns or just want to talk, do not hesitate to reach out to me.
Monica Lopez
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Jennifer Kolbauer - Gender Equity Coordinator |
Hello everyone!
I am Jennifer Kolbauer and I received my Bachelors of Science in Aquatic Biology from UCSB in 2010. I have worked in various informal education settings including aquariums and after-school programs such as the Boys and Girls Club of Greater San Diego. My work experience extends to both animal husbandry and education coordination for over eight years. I have worked for the K-12 STEM Center for the last two years to inspire, inform, and impact underrepresented youth through STEM education and outreach, initially through coordination of the MESA and Code.org programs. In the last year, I have taken on the Gender Equity Coordinator position to ensure inclusivity in all STEM Center programs by cultivating partnership and collaboration to institutionalize equity. More recently, I have taken over the signature Mission Science Program and oversee the STEM Outreach initiative for the Center as a whole.
Now that we have a full team, one of my goals is to collaborate regularly so that we can continuously assess our programs to strengthen equitable and inclusive strategies as a Center. Specifically, I envision the co-creation of trainings and other intentional content for our staff and student workers. I hope that these trainings will support our student workers to engage our K-12 students with an informed equity lens. Subsequently, this will have a positive impact on the youth we serve within the community, by cultivating a safe space and a sense of belonging for all.
If you would like to know of the equity work I have done so far at the Center, click here.
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Living Advantage, Inc. (LA, Inc.) |
Living Advantage, Inc. in partnership with the K-12 STEM Center was recently awarded a USC Good Neighbors grant for their proposal, Virtual Assisted Living and Education Program (VALE).
VALE is one of LA, Inc.'s signature and oldest programs, and assumed & facilitated the virtual tutoring program that was implemented by USC Viterbi K-12 STEM Center in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It served LA public schools the STEM center already catered to. The domain expertise of the tutors included Math, Science, Language, and Computer Science. In Spring 2021, they adopted a new format in addition to on-demand tutoring namely Drop-in tutoring.
VALE provides needs and assessments, mentoring, tutoring, access to higher education, life skills workshops, housing placement, healthcare assistance, career training and placement, and transportation to an average of 150 youth per year. VALE promotes increasing grade levels and on-time graduation through monthly virtual workshops, helping youth engage with their education, receiving services and resources, as well as learn crucial life skills. This program pairs with eLockbox and Living Advantage Drop-Out Prevention Services (LADPS) & is designed to give youth a solid foundation that enhances self-sufficiency to give them a better quality of life. For more information about VALE, click on the link below!
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National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) Jr Clubs |
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As we prepare to return to campus this fall, programs like NSBE Jr are also transitioning from virtual to in-person meetings. The IDEA team is invested in supporting NSBE Jr and creating more NSBE Jr clubs across the Southern California region. Khali Cannad and Christine Wood currently run and manage one of LA's most successful NSBE Jr clubs, and we look forward to continuing supporting them and taking their expertise into consideration when creating more NSBE Jr chapters.
For more information on NSBE at USC, click here.
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This year the IDEA team got to work with each of our signature summer programs, Energy of STEM, Summer High School Intensive in Next-Generation Engineering (SHINE), and Summer Engineering Camp. We were able to provide lessons and hold focus groups that focused on inclusion, diversity, equity, and access within STEM.
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Gender Equity Coordinator Jennifer presented a female role model in the Windpower industry to encourage Energy of STEM summer camp students that this previously male-dominated career path can be performed by anyone no matter their gender, race, or ethnicity. She also reviewed the job outlook, education required, and salary to get students to start thinking early about a potential STEM career.
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For the second year in a row, Monica and Anne joined Jennifer to hold a focus group for girls in SHINE. The goals for this year's focus group were to provide a safe space for students to share their gendered experiences in STEM education, empower SHINE female students to encourage advocacy for themselves by understanding structural and cultural factors, and provide the opportunity for SHINE female students to share tips, and build a sense of community and empowerment.
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Lastly, Anne and Jennifer worked with Alexandra to create DEI lessons for Summer Engineering Camp. Jennifer and Anne got to present lessons that highlighted the camp's theme this year: UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG): Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable. They encouraged students to think about how the city of Los Angeles was planned and constructed with a DEI mindset and to push them to design their cities to be as equitable and inclusive as possible.
To learn all about the summer programs that we provided this year, click here to read more about them!
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In the past, once summer programs were over, that was the end of keeping in contact with our summer program students. This year, it is the IDEA team's goal to continue engagement with our girls and students of color who participated in our summer programs this year.
We will continue engagement by providing mentoring. To help with our mentorship goals, our partnerships with LA, Inc.'s VALE program and Johnson C Smith University (JCSU) with Advanced Personal Presence Emulated Augmented Reality Assisted Network of Counselors and Educators (APPEARANCE) will ensure that our students receive the highest quality mentoring to help shape and form their STEM identity.
TO KEEP ALL INFORMATION THAT IS SHARED IN THIS NEWSLETTER IN ONE PLACE, THE IDEA TEAM IS HAPPY TO ANNOUNCE THAT WE ARE CREATING A WEBSITE. WHEN OUR PAGE IS COMPLETE, WE WILL BE SHARING OUR WEBSITE LINK WITH YOU ALL.
BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR AN UPDATE SOON!
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IDEA team members Jennifer and Anne recently applied for F5's STEM Education Grants for Women and Girls of Color.
Applying for this grant required that our programs serve at least 50% of girls. The Center proudly serves 50/50 girls and boys.
Our racial and ethnic breakdown of girls of color is:
- 4.2% African American/Black girls
- 5.6% Asian American/Pacific girls
- 12.4% Hispanic/Latinx girls
The IDEA team is focused on increasing our numbers for girls of color across the board, and especially for our African American/Black girls.
If you are interested in the work F5 does for STEM outreach and impact, click on the link below.
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Suggested Reading for the Month |
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Using Media to Help Young People in the United States Consider a Career in a STEM-related Field |
In this investigation, researchers explore if media can play a part in children's vocational anticipatory socialization (VAS). VAS is a multi-year, multi-step process that begins in childhood and informs young adults about possibilities for their future work-life experience. As children search for their place in the world, parental feedback, instruction in the classroom, and exposure to career role models can affect their interest in STEM careers. This study examines the impact of STEM-related media, television host gender, child gender, and parental encouragement has on elementary school children’s interest in STEM topics and careers.
To learn about this research, click on the link below.
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Learning at Home While Under-connected |
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Lower-Income Families During the COVID-19 Pandemic |
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Compiled from survey data of 1,000 parents of children ages three to thirteen, with total household incomes below the national median of $75,000, this new report provides timely, pointed, and thought-provoking insights on the challenges of learning at home while being under-connected, as well as some unexpected bright spots from a year of pandemic learning and parenting.
To read more about this article, click on the link below.
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Impact of In-School Suspension |
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Black Girls’ Math Course-Taking in School |
Diversifying the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce has been a priority in the United States for several decades. Public and private corporations have invested immensely in increasing the STEM readiness of gendered and racialized populations. Despite these efforts, persistent inequities remain with little progress. Mathematics is an important foundational component of science, technology, and engineering fields, which are domains in which Black girls are underrepresented. Black girls are more likely to receive in-school suspension in comparison to their non-Black peers. This study explores the relationship between in-school suspension and the highest math course completed in a multi-level analysis of Black female students.
To learn more about this study, click on the link below.
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Special Theme: Responding to Anti‑Blackness in Science, Mathematics, Technology & STEM Education |
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Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto |
The COVID-19 pandemic has provided yet more evidence of the impacts of injustice across intersecting raced, gendered, and classed lines. An intensified global uprising against anti-Black violence in response to the murders of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd has amplified a reckoning with the ongoing effects of the “global state of emergency of anti-Blackness” in all of its enduring forms and violence. The current time of reckoning has inspired an interrogation of anti-Blackness in the sciences, such as seen in the emergence of social media movements such as #BlackinNeuro and #ShutDownSTEM. Inspired by the disruptive potentialities of the moment, the articles in this special theme offer considerations of possibilities for STEM professions and STEM education to become sites of liberatory practices and conceptual orientations that act to disrupt anti-Blackness.
To continue reading, click on the link below.
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Lastly, we at the Center want to give special thanks to Fiserv and Betty Lou Gross 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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