To help bolster the numbers of young female students pursuing science, tech, engineering and mathematics courses, Flinders University’s STEM Enrichment Academy presented the STEM Enrichment Conference at Flinders last week, hosting 158 Year 9 schoolgirls from across South Australia and the Northern Territory.
Lead by Flinders’ Professor Maria Parappilly OAM, the conference was made possible through Department of Industry, Science and Resources and a Women in STEM and Entrepreneurship (WiSE) grant which aims to enrich at least 1000 Year 9 girls across SA and NT over three years.
This year’s three-day program of inspiring keynote addresses and hands-on physics, chemistry and AI workshops was designed to increase girls’ participation in STEM fields and to help map out what their future careers can look like.
Speakers included such STEM role models as Professor Nicole Bell from The University of Melbourne on the Hidden Universe and Dr Pina Dall’armi-Stoks from DSTG on physics career pathways.
The students also received great reassurance from such speakers as India Shackleford, who worked at Double Helix magazine as a journalist and is now pursuing a Doctor of Medicine, who said “studying Science and STEM gives you transferable skills that set you up for life”.
Professor Parappilly says the program aims to inspire girls to engage with STEM subjects, in particular maths and physics, in interesting, varied and relevant everyday problem-solving. As well as giving teachers up-to-date STEM professional development, the conference also provides students with career pathway ideas.
As Director of Flinders’ STEM Enrichment Academy, Professor Parappilly says she’s delighted to support programs for girls and women in STEM at all levels of their lives – including programs for university students and academics.
“In physics studies, females have been under-represented at senior school and university level, so I’m very pleased to see three girls from the 2019 STEM Enrichment Academy (all from country high schools) go on to high performance computational physics, space science and astrophysics and advanced Honours in physics,” she says, also noting that another three students are doing Honours in advanced sciences and laboratory sciences.
“With the under-representation of women in engineering, I am pleased to see 18 of our STEM Enrichment Academy alumni choose to study various courses, including systems and security engineering, architectural and structural, mechanical and biomedical in South Australia – including a double degree in engineering and sciences.”