Every day we read about the ongoing challenges to create and replenish the educational enrichment of New Mexican students. We lament the state’s educational low ranking nationally. Fiftieth again? Is it possible to combat school fatigue, to excite students about the values of learning once again? Can they envision successful career pathways?
Consider this approach to enliven those challenges. Let’s focus on helping young women to strengthen their physical, mental and intellectual well-being. Let’s provide a safe environment where they can build their sense of belonging, of feeling more confident in their abilities and of realizing that they, too, can experience and enjoy creative educational success.
Let’s celebrate, not diminish, their cultural integrity. Let’s reassure them that gender bias in education does not have to exist.
These themes explain the success of the American Association of University Women’s Tech Trek camp which this year was held in-person. In June 2022, 52 upcoming diverse eighth grade girls from 32 schools in 18 different regions of our state participated in a one-week girls only camp at one of our nation’s highest rated STEM universities, New Mexico Tech in Socorro.
Hands on inquiry-based STEM courses were taught by leading educators from New Mexico. This imaginative, often exhilarating, coursework included astrophysics’ “A Tour of the Stellar Lifecycle,” mechanical engineering’s “A World in Motion,” computer science’s “Girls in Cybersecurity,” physics/optics’ “Waves and Lenses,” and engineering, robotics and coding’s “Tech to Help My World.”
To further encourage and demonstrate the viability of becoming professional women in STEM fields, Tech Trek provided two Professional Women’s Nights, which highlighted a transgenerational transmission of STEM expertise. Girls were divided into two groups so each could hear from six diverse New Mexico women experts, first presenting on a panel and then sitting at individual tables to answer questions.
The professional women shared their expertise on environmental and mechanical engineering, physical therapy and geriatric medicine, pharmacology, seismological science, nanoscience and microsystems engineering, plus polar field physics and geophysics, chemical and biological engineering, mathematical statistics and ground system-controlled satellites.
To further inspire our campers to seek new horizons, they participated in workshops on drones, the engineering design process, game theory, solar cars, and genetics, in which they captured their own DNA in necklaces suitable for wearing. They visited the National Radio Astronomy Observatory Operations Center and the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge. Some visited the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources’ Mineral Museum, and others went to the Quebradas Backcountry Byway.
The camp’s junior and senior counselors, dorm monitors and nurse were integral in helping our campers experience what it’s like to go to college and live in the dorms at Tech. All our campers were tested for COVID-19 by their families before they left home and again when then arrived at camp. Our wonderful nurse then daily ensured the virus was not sickening our campers and thus we had a
100 percent success rate in keeping our campers healthy.
Congratulations to the seven young women from the Santa Fe area who attended camp. They represented El Dorado Community School, Pojoaque Valley Middle School, Nina Otero Community School, and the Santa Fe Girls Schools. Thank you also to the dedicated teachers from those schools who nominated their students.
Since 2014, AAUW Tech Trek has and will continue to expand and enrich the voices of young women in New Mexico. We will not ignore their educational enrichment. The American Association of University Women New Mexico looks forward to their equal standing in our schools, universities, workplaces, and communities.
Lynn Heffron is the New Mexico president of the American Association of University Women.