UC San Diego Thursday announced the official launch of Sally Ride Science with a slate of summer workshops in science, technology, engineering, art and math, or STEAM, aimed at young women in middle school and high school.
The program is the result of a partnership agreement between UC San Diego and Sally Ride Science, an education company that the late astronaut and her long-time partner, Tam O’Shaughnessy, co-founded with three friends in 2001. Ride, who was the first American women in space, and the other founders were committed to expanding educational opportunities in the sciences, especially for girls and young women.
The goal of the new partnership is to continue and expand that important mission.
“With its focus on future generations—especially girls and historically underrepresented K-12 students—Sally Ride Science aligns with the university’s Strategic Plan goals to expand existing initiatives and implement new approaches that result in accessible and affordable learning,” Chancellor Pradeep Khosla said. “This newly created summer program is the first of many that will inspire and encourage young students to pursue STEAM education.”
The Sally Ride Science Junior Academy, which is aimed at students in grades 6 through 12, is a unique partnership between UC San Diego Extension, the San Diego Super Computer Center and Scripps Institution of Oceanography, with each entity helping shape and develop the innovative week-long summer workshops.
Offerings will include a variety of STEAM courses where students will immerse themselves in hands-on projects, assuming the roles of a geophysicist, ocean engineer, computer scientist and beyond. Top-notch STEAM instructors will lead these workshops, serving both as teachers and role models. The workshops also will incorporate real-life stories of vibrant individuals conducting research in each discipline with the goal of inspiring students to pursue careers in STEAM fields.
Karen Flammer, co-founder of Sally Ride Science and its current director of education, said the workshops are designed to inspire more girls and young women to pursue careers in STEAM fields to help close an ongoing gender gap.
Currently, women receive 57 percent of all of the bachelor of science degrees awarded, but they are woefully underrepresented in such areas as computer science, where they represent only 18 percent of the degrees awarded, as well as in engineering and physics, where they represent just 19 percent of the degrees awarded in each of those fields.
“If we are going to achieve equity in these fields, we need to start attracting more girls in middle school and high school,” Flammer said. “We need to do more than just spark an interest. We need to keep them engaged and show them the path forward. These workshops have been created to do just that.”
