POSTED IN  EDUCATION
STEM conference shows Long Beach girls that
math and science are for them
by Alicia Robinson, Long Beach Post, 2/27/2024

Watch the Video HERE

While growing up in the Long Beach area, Alexxandra Hurtado was fascinated by her science classes and began to dream of becoming a doctor.

For years she kept quiet about her career goal for fear that people would discourage her, like one teacher who told her that working in entertainment or as a newscaster would be “more suitable to your personality,” Hurtado said.

But she found her confidence and earned a bachelor’s degree from Cal State Long Beach in molecular biology, and now she’s working as a stem cell researcher at City of Hope while she applies to medical school.

Hurtado hopes her story will inspire the more than 230 girls from Long Beach middle schools who came to a STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) conference on Friday at Sato Academy, a math- and science- focused high school in the Long Beach Unified School District.

After hearing a keynote address from Hurtado, the girls split up to attend about 10 hands-on workshops led by women in STEM fields. They measured the crash force generated by toy cars they built; they tested different materials as potential water treatment filters; they learned how technicians do MRI and ultrasound imaging; and they built structures of dry spaghetti and marshmallows, then checked their stability on shaky ground (in this case, a pan of Jell-O).

Sato Academy Principal Veronica Coleman uses the event, which is put on by the Long Beach branch of the American Association of University Women, to make her pitch to students who might want to enroll.

“We’ve got a lot of young ladies here from the North of Long Beach and the Westside of Long Beach who don’t even know the school exists,” Coleman said.

“When they get into our classrooms and they see the rocketry that we’ve got going on, and they see the aerospace that we’ve got going on, and the flight simulator, and the wind tunnel and Anatomage table — when they see all of that stuff going on and they can meet our students, they can kind of see themselves as being here, where they didn’t even have that concept before.”

And after attending Friday’s conference, even girls who choose a different high school will have seen people like them doing jobs they might want to do. Hurtado said she noticed during a hospital internship that she was the only Latina working there, and it spurred her to keep pursuing her dream.

Long Beach Unified school board President Diana Craighead said events like the conference at Sato Academy help show girls they can succeed in math and science careers, even if their chosen field is dominated by men.

“We’re still a minority, that’s why it’s important,” Craighead said. “We still don’t make as much money as men — we need that representation.”

The Long Beach Post Article may also be found HERE

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From the Long Beach Grunion Gazette (January 23, 2023):

Long Beach nonprofit celebrates 25 years of inspiring young girls to go into STEM
American Association of University Women organize, support
Tech Trek summer camp at college campuses.

Twenty-five years ago, the Long Beach branch of the American Association of University Women decided to address the lack of women in STEM careers by introducing middle school girls to the possibilities.

That decision became reality with Tech Trek, a weeklong summer stay at one of three colleges for middle school girls. Since the program began, AAUW Long Beach has sponsored 96 Long Beach Unified School District students in the program, according to the organization’s publicity chair, Jane Hansen.

At the group’s first meeting of the year, on Jan. 7, nine former Tech Trek campers formed a panel to talk about their experiences to kick off the 25th anniversary year. The students attended camp at UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara or Whittier College, and during their talk, they highlighted a boat trip to observe dolphins, workshops about careers in STEM — science, technology, engineering, match — and living in a college dorm for a week.

“We’ve learned that some students attending Tech Trek have been inspired by their exposure to STEM careers,” said AAUW Long Beach President Denise Montoya, “and are considering applying to the LBUSD Sato Academy of Mathematics and Science in the future.”

Students are nominated by science teachers to participate in Tech Trek.

In Long Beach, Susan Garcia, science teacher at Colin Powell Academy, and William Feliciano, math teacher at Hamilton Middle School, have nominated dozens of campers over the years, Hansen said.

After students are nominated, they write a two-page essay and are interviewed by the AAUW Tech Trek committee before selections are made.

While the Long Beach AAUW is not the only Tech Trek supporter, the program was founded in 1998 with startup funds from an AAUW Educational Foundation Community Action Grant. Tech Trek is at the top of the list of current projects on the Long Beach AAUW website.

The Jan. 7 meeting was the group’s annual fundraiser for the Tech Trek program, and more donations are needed this year — the camp price has increased from $250 to $300 a camper. The total cost at the campuses is $1,150 to $1,200.

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July 18, 2022
Long Beach Grunion Gazette Letter to the Editor
FROM:​Denise Montoya, Co-President
RE:​​Title IX and AAUW

In reflecting on Mike Guardabascio’s article, “Long Beach helped Title IX, women’s sports become reality”, I’d like to add that the American Association of University Women (AAUW) had “skin in the game” in getting this landmark legislation passed in 1972. AAUW after the end of WWII spent two decades surveying college and university campuses. Documentation found that by the late 1960’s most schools had practiced “widespread discrimination against women at all levels of higher education from students to trustees”. (National AAUW website)

In 1970, 250 colleges faced charges of sex discrimination. AAUW made national news by distributing guidelines to the presidents of all four-year colleges in the US, titled “AAUW’s Standards for Women in Higher Education: Affirmative Policy in Achieving Sex Equality in the Academic Community”. This and a groundswell of gender equity activism across the nation, resulted in Title IX’s passage on June 23, 1972.

It’s a federal civil rights law prohibiting gender-based discrimination in any school or educational program receiving federal funding. Title IX has created opportunities and protections for women and men, girls and boys, students, staff, and trustees in for-profit schools, charter schools, libraries and museums as well.

In addition to preventing discrimination in athletics, Title IX affects all areas of education including STEM, career and technical education, sexual harassment and assault, sexual harassment based on gender identity, recruitment, admissions and housing; pregnant, parenting and/or married students, comparable facilities and access to course offerings, financial assistance, student health services and insurance benefits, and career and technical education.

June 24, 2022
AAUW Statement Strongly Condemning the U.S. Supreme Court’s Opinion on Dobbs v.
Jackson Women’s Health Organization