The STEM field has historically been dominated by men, but despite this, the world is known for changing, and now half of STEM workers are female. One somewhat underlooked STEM profession is teaching and Rancho has multiple female science and math teachers.
“I always knew I wanted to be in STEM, but I believe it was first or second grade when we were learning about how water evaporates; it doesn’t just disappear, and that lesson stuck with me and I thought, ‘oh wow, science is cool.’ There’s a lot you can’t see and that’s cool,” Ms. Sanchez, a chemistry teacher, said.
Although Ms. Sanchez knew from a young age she wanted to be in STEM, life doesn’t always have a straight path and some people learn about their interests later in life.
“My senior year of high school I had a lot of space in between my classes and my counselor was like, ‘You should take some science class,’ so I did. I took honors physics and pre-calculus and I really liked them so I changed my major from English to physics,” Ms. Moulton said.
Both teachers have an obvious love for science but because science was a male-dominated field both teachers experienced challenges being heard during their college careers.
“The school I went to for my undergrad, Biola, had a very female-heavy population. But that wasn’t the case in my STEM classes; there were times when I was the only girl in the room. Sometimes people don’t listen to you when you’re the only one that is different,” Ms. Moulton said.
This experience of being spoken over by men is not unique to Moulton and unfortunately happened to Sanchez as well.
“In college once I started getting into the more rigorous physics classes I started seeing a lot more men than women in those classes. When we were paired up in groups I remember my ideas tended to be put aside a lot, and that was hard,” Ms. Sanchez said.
Although being a woman in STEM has its difficulties it’s still very doable and worth it, and although both teachers expressed their hardships with being a woman in STEM, both teachers have role models that helped inspire them.
“My biggest role model was my professor from Pasadena City College. Her name was Dr. Hartman and she’s my role model because she did really cool research on astronomy and studied at MIT, and then she wanted to be a professor and teach but she managed to have a life outside of all that,” Ms. Sanchez said.
Although Ms.Sanchez’s role model was someone she knew personally there are plenty of women in STEM to look up to.
“My favorite person to hear about is a little-known scientist named Hadiyah-Nicole Green; she’s a physicist who is working on using lasers to cure cancer. I’ve been following her since she was an undergrad trying to figure out how things work. She stuck with it and ran into issues with funding or lack of biology knowledge but she stuck with it and kept trying,” Ms. Moulton said.
The way that women in STEM proceed to push boundaries and keep innovating is truly inspiring. Both teachers advised that young women interested in STEM should be bold and willing to step out of their comfort zone. Although pursuing a STEM career may have its hurdles it is always worth it to pursue something that has the potential to change lives.