The “Her Stories: Adventures in STEM” blog series is a collection of stories about 20 women in science and engineering fields, written by members of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) Pre-College Working Group.
These inspiring women have experienced a variety of life experiences and career paths, and these stories and accompanying artwork help to capture the vast diversity of our featured scientists and engineers.
We hope this series will show you how exciting engineering and science can be and help you realize that anyone can choose to become a scientist or an engineer.
Story by Leah Baker
“Improvise, adapt, and overcome” is a motto known to many military family members, including computer and systems engineer Stephanie Raeman.
Born in southern Georgia, Stephanie moved around to different coastal bases throughout her childhood due to her father’s U.S. Navy career. Though this posed challenges growing up, she learned to adjust from a young age and to put the “improvise, adapt, and overcome” philosophy into practice.
Stephanie recalls her first introduction to engineering during her fourth-grade year in South Carolina while participating in the Students Actively Involved in Learning (SAIL) program. The class created a water purification system and wrote simplified code directing a cartoon turtle to draw lines as it moved about the screen.
Stephanie enjoyed the challenge of these projects, but would not have another opportunity to take computer classes for several years.
The transition from elementary school to middle and high school was difficult for Stephanie. “Suddenly, it was not cool to be smart, and there were boundaries discouraging students from taking higher level courses,” she recollects.
Stephanie had to “adapt and overcome” by supplementing her education with library books and summer camps paid for by her grandmother. Luckily, after 10th grade, her family moved again, this time to Washington state. Moving allowed Stephanie to experience different communities and make many friends from all over the country. The dawn of the World Wide Web helped her to keep in contact with out-of-state friends, and as Stephanie entered 11th grade, she was reintroduced to computer science at her new high school.
Stephanie’s school in Washington fostered learning, where she took two years of Advanced Placement (AP) classes in computer science, physics, and calculus. She remembers a particularly challenging computer science project where she chose to code a vending machine in C++, and there were many variables and actions to take into account. Vending machines are more complicated than you might think!
At her high school, Stephanie participated in outreach programs that encouraged students to learn how things worked by taking them apart. During one of her high school physics classes, an assembly of female engineers from MIT led a group problem-solving activity. The class was divided in two, and the goal for each team was to have all group members touch a ball in the smallest amount of time possible.
Stephanie’s crew won because of her idea for everyone to stack their hands in a vertical slant, with one person dropping the ball from the top. This way, the ball would touch everyone’s fingertips on its way to the ground. Earning praise from the MIT team, such experiences inspired Stephanie to lead outreach activities in college. “I wanted to be like those college girls when I got to college,” she reflected. “I wanted to spark excitement and self-confidence in others.”
Upon graduation, Stephanie attended Georgia Tech’s electrical and computer engineering program. She remembers the first year being difficult and lonely because she was now considered average amongst her classmates, and there were not many other women in her program to make friends with.
She called home, uncertain if she was able to complete the computer engineering program, but extracurricular activities and involvement kept her from leaving Georgia Tech.
For example, Stephanie found great joy helping found a local women’s sorority, Chi Omega Tau, by creating rules and governance. The experience built leadership skills that would prove important during future career interviews. She got involved volunteering with SWE, mentoring a LEGO league team, and participating in outreach events like those that had visited her high school years before.
After graduation from Georgia Tech, Stephanie worked for a Department of Defense contractor in Florida specializing in electronic airplane equipment. Though she enjoyed the coding work, her job included hands-on creation of the final product which sparked an interest in mechanical engineering. Stephanie earned her master’s degree in industrial and systems engineering from the University of Florida while continuing her full-time work with the defense contractor.
During this time, she continued to help with SWE and LEGO League, returning later as a head judge. She volunteered as a teacher for a “Introducing Girls to Engineering” workshop for upper elementary and middle school girls on how electrical circuits work. She implemented the same project-based learning from her days in SAIL, supporting the young girls as they built a flashlight. It was during these experiences that she found a sense of passion unmatched in her day job.
Searching for the same feeling of purpose, Stephanie went to work for a small company as a project manager tailoring web applications to individuals with disabilities. Though fulfilling, it wouldn’t be until Stephanie happened upon an article highlighting a robotics engineer who set up a robotics program at his local high school that she would realize her true calling to teach.
Fast-forward to today, Stephanie teaches two technology courses at Reedy Creek Magnet Middle School Center for the Digital Sciences in North Carolina. Her curriculum introduces sixth, seventh, and eighth graders to how computers work, including how graphics and sound are translated into numbers and how emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and drone technologies are changing our lives.
She merges art and science in her lessons to make technology less intimidating and to tailor content to students in ways they can understand. She uses project-based learning and encourages her students to “improvise, adapt, and overcome,” as they design technical solutions to real-world problems.
Stephanie now runs the Future Cities program for the school, where several teams compete to design, build, and present a model of a city 100 years in the future around a theme. This year’s theme was “Farm to Table,” and her school’s team, Feathers Fielders, won third place in North Carolina!
As a leader in the field, Stephanie also enjoys sharing her expertise beyond the classroom. She was recently featured in this episode of The Friday Dive, a podcast by the Friday Institute, where she discusses cybersecurity, computer science, and AI in K-12 education.
Stephanie found her passion for teaching through enjoyable extracurricular activities, like volunteering with FIRST Robotics, that brought meaning into her life as she made them into her career. She says, “I love my job. My favorite part is when my students see that they can make a difference in the world.” Stephanie credits her success to her adaptability learned in childhood and not being afraid to jump in and try something new.
The “Her Stories: Adventures in STEM” series is a collection of stories about 20 women in science and engineering fields, written by members of the SWE Pre-College Working Group. Dive into the rest of the series here!
Know a precollege kid interested in STEM? Join SWENext, the Society’s free program that allows students ages 5 through 18 to join the SWE engineering and technology community.
SWENexters enjoy numerous opportunities throughout the year to learn, network, and connect with peers, role models, and industry professionals. Plus, this diverse, welcoming, precollege STEM community provides a safe place where kids can feel seen, heard, and validated. SWENext is open to all genders.
