Women in STEM (WiSTEM) is a stem committee of young women who are interested in STEM and potentially in pursuing STEM careers in the future.
Lucy Ludwig is the two year president of WiSTEM.
¨I love leading people and I think these girls have a lot of capability for the future. I love being a resource for them that they can come to if they have any questions. I also just love event planning and putting on events that HHS students can enjoy,¨ Ludwig said.
Ludwig explains if you’re interested in leadership, or making connections within the STEM field, WiSTEM could be a good club for you.
¨It’s a great opportunity for young women to make connections with other girls in the school who have similar interests as them, but then also to make connections with JMU professors, and women who work in STEM fields,¨ Ludwig said. ¨It’s just a great opportunity to make those kinds of connections, and to work on your leadership and your teamwork. In all the events we do we always need help from our committee. So being able to put your leadership and your teamwork to the test is a great thing there.¨
Megan Cullip, the STEM biology and environmental science teacher at HHS, has been the WiSTEM teacher advisor for seven years.
¨For a very long time, women have been underrepresented in STEM fields, especially in engineering. The goal of WiSTEM is to encourage young women to pursue STEM related jobs. Most importantly, we plan events where we invite women from our community that look like our students [to talk], and it helps people actually see themselves in that role,¨ Cullip said.
When Cullip started teaching at HHS, she was the only female teacher in the STEM academy. She herself never had a club like WiSTEM in highschool, so she gladly took on the role of advisor.
Friday Oct.6, WiSTEM will be hosting their fourth annual Film of the Field.
¨Film on the field is an event where we rent this big movie screen and a projector and we put a movie on in the football field,¨ Ludwig said. ¨We have entrance games, so people can play spike ball cornhole, can jam whatever games they want to play, they can play it before the movie starts. There’s also cash concessions. Everybody just kind of joins together on the football field.¨
Wristbands will be available to get into the movie during lunch Oct.6.
