This month’s SWEet Wisdom focuses on the STEM activities that three engineers participated in during high school that helped them on their engineering journey. Read on to hear more about their experiences!
What type of STEM activities did you participate in during high school? Or, what activities would you recommend that SWENexters participate in during high school?”
Danielle Schroeder, EIT, ENV SP, CBSI
SWE Life Member
I didn’t do many STEM-related activities in high school, as my main focus outside of school was tennis and performing arts, so it is okay if you don’t have extensive experience before studying engineering! If you do want to participate in a STEM-related activities in high school, getting involved with your local robotics team is a great option. This is more specific to civil engineering, but if you can learn any CAD programs during high school, that would be helpful before starting college. I also recommend seeing if any local colleges are holding events or programs. One program that sparked me to choose engineering was attending a one -day engineering camp for girls that was held at a local college.
Kristen Deak
SWE Member
I participated in Mathletes, Computer Club, and STEM volunteer opportunities, mostly. I would recommend participating in or trying out as many STEM-related activities that your school and community offers, so you can start to figure out what your interests are and what you enjoy doing before you reach college.
Madalyn Nguyen
Founder of Poway High School SWENext Club and Past President
I participated in FIRST Robotics Competition (8th grade to current) where I had an opportunity to hone my leadership, technical skills, and communications especially in public speaking. As a junior, I was the Chief Project Officer in charge of overseeing the building and programming of 120 lb industrial-sized robots for competition while managing 15 subteam leads. I am the current President of my robotics team.
I also founded my school’s SWENext Club (2018) and participated in SHLA at WE19 & WE20. I spoke at WE19’s SWENext Session and Invent It. Build It. luncheon for 500 middle school girls. I was also the keynote speaker for WE20 San Diego for the Power Hour Luncheon. I was a panelist for the WE20 session “The Impact of FIRST from the perspective of SWE members”. On behalf of my club, I also traveled to St. Louis in 2019 to present in the DesignLab Community Engagement Challenge and won a $1,000 grant to organize the Girls in STEM Inspiration Day in May of 2019. We also won the DesignLab grant at WE20 San Diego for our project “Go, Baby, Go”. Regretfully, the event was canceled due to Covid-19.
For this coming school year, I was also nominated as Poway Unified School District Career Technical Education (CTE) Ambassador and Poway High School Titan Ambassador. Titan Ambassadors are selected by nominations from teachers based on their strong academics, leadership, ethics, and activities. They serve as positive role models in the Poway Unified community and advocate the six pillars of Character Counts at local elementary and middle schools. I am very fortunate to know my passion for STEM since 7th grade, so I have been a role model for girls in my community and globally as a way to pay it forward. Currently, I am a coding instructor for Code Ninjas a game-based curriculum center for kids 7-14 years old.
This post was written by the FY22 SWENext Programs Publications Workgroup.
