Getting Ahead of the STEM Gap: Early Exposure Leaves Lasting Impression

By Conchita Topinka
Our innovative middle school STEM explorations class is designed to inspire young girls to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Through exposure to different types of STEM-adjacent careers and visits from professionals working in STEM careers, we hope to encourage the next generation of female leaders in these fields.
This is what career counseling looks like in middle school at Hutchison. Hannah Dunlap ’25, who is roughly 10 hours away from obtaining her pilot’s license, visited with seventh graders in Jennifer Young’s STEM Explorations class to talk about how she has turned her dream of flying into a reality. She made an impression. “She made me think ‘I can do that.’ I don’t need to let stereotypes hold me back,” said Caroline Campbell ’30.

Senior Hannah Dunlap ’25 has been working hard training and earning flight hours. Her goal is to have her pilot’s license by the end of her senior year. A member of Hutchison’s myExperience STEM cohort, she started an aviation club at Hutchison as part of her capstone project.

On Veterans Day, Cris Scheinblum, a Navy veteran and Hutchison parent, presented to middle and upper school girls at a special convocation. The naval pilot shared her experiences, including more than 200 carrier landings and almost as many tactical missions. She made an impression.

“She reminded me of Hannah,” said Charlotte McAdams ’30, while a classmate literally shuddered as she recalled Scheinblum describing how you land planes on a Navy carrier.

Navy veteran and Hutchison parent Cris Scheinblum spoke to middle and upper school girls at a Veterans Day convocation.

Jennifer Young is making an impression as well. Young, who turned to teaching after a career as an engineer and currently teaches sixth grade pre-algebra in addition to STEM Explorations, is determined to usher more young women into science- and math-related careers. Keenly aware of the main contributors to the STEM gap—math anxiety, stereotypes, and lack of role models—Young’s class, a quarter-long offering in middle school, is an early yet very intentional exploration of possibilities, personal preferences, and empowerment for seventh grade girls.

An extension of the core curriculum where girls build foundational knowledge and skills, the STEM Explorations class entices girls to explore futures that are aligned with their interests and skills.

Working professionals regularly visit the class to introduce careers in more detail. The class was surprised to learn that a marine biologist does not spend all her time in the water and that, like many of them, a successful lawyer with international experience had participated in Model United Nations when she was in middle school. Young has partnered with Tracey Zerwig Ford, the community engagement director in Hutchison’s Institute for Responsible Citizenship, to identify and secure guest speakers from a wide variety of industries and careers for the class.

“It’s just opening the idea of a career up to them. In some cases, we’re introducing them to careers and possibilities that they didn’t even know existed,” said Young. “We know that girls in middle school start to fall away from math and science. It is a nationwide issue. By the end of middle school and eighth grade, we have lost many girls to career paths that potentially involve math and science because they’re shying away from those subjects in high school.”

YOUNG TEACHES CODING, working one-on-one with students, guiding them through character selection and coding custom looks in Scratch. Hands-on learning helps bring creativity and programming concepts to life in the STEM Explorations class.

The End Goal

The gender gap in STEM occupations is well-documented, but a recent study by the Ruling Our eXperiences (ROX) nonprofit uncovered some discouraging root causes. The Girls’ Index, a national study of the experiences and aspirations of girls in grades 5 through 12, indicates that girls have misgivings about their abilities to conquer STEM subjects. In 2017, 73 percent of the girls said they felt proficient in math and science, in 2023, that number had dropped to 59 percent.

Young hopes that encouraging girls to discover something they’re interested in will quell some of this math anxiety. She takes a holistic approach, pulling different levers to help girls explore what careers pique their interests, learn how their brains are wired, and discover their unique talents and strengths. Young said thinking about a career path as early as seventh grade gives girls an aspirational “end goal” that can impact their course selections in high school and motivate them to power through math and science challenges as they come up. 

“I want to encourage girls to stick with math and science and persevere … and see that they’re capable of working toward these great careers instead of taking themselves out of it,” said Young. “If you’re taking algebra right now as an eighth grader, or geometry as an eighth grader, and it is tough for you, I want you to understand that you have a pathway and need to continue along that path and persevere.”

TO HELP GIRLS SEE ROLE MODELS AND VISUALIZE FUTURE CAREER POSSIBILITIES, they attended a panel to learn what it is like to work in the technology field or as an engineer who designs software or medical devices. The panel included Maria Recker, senior manager for SDG Corporation; Eliza Keffler, co-founder and VP of marketing for West Tennessee Consulting; Bianca Cordero, quality engineer at Smith+Nephew; and Julia Strecker, product development engineer at Smith+Nephew. The panel described how they chose their careers, what some of their day-to-day experiences are like, when they’ve had to pivot, and their best advice for our girls.

Left Brain or Right Brain?

Creating that pathway is easier if you have a clear understanding of your interests and talents. Leveraging students’ strengths to help them excel at something that brings them joy is a tenet of the Hutchison experience, but Young presents it in the context of selecting a career path, something usually reserved for upper school. A recent assignment involved a 24-question survey on left brain vs. right brain personality traits to help girls understand how they are “wired” as they contemplate their futures.

Using the careerinstem.com website, girls explore careers based on their personalities and interests. The website also discusses “soft” and “hard” skills and how many degrees are required for certain career paths, which is news to most 12- and 13-year-olds. More importantly, Young said, the girls discover that many careers are “STEM-adjacent.” Something she likes to emphasize as the girls toss around different options. London McCall ’30, a soccer player considering a future in sports management or training, said it makes sense that STEM will be a part of her future. “When you injure yourself, you have to figure out what happened and how to fix it,” said McCall. 
 
Campbell loves theatre but sometimes gets stage fright. She researched voice work and was surprised that STEM is involved. “I thought you just recorded your voice and went on with your life. No, it’s much more than that. You have to know how to upload the recordings sometimes,” said Campbell. 

As part of the process, learning what they don’t like is almost as important as knowing what they like. For example, McAdams stumbled onto “snake therapy” and decided that was a hard “no.” 

Emma Cohn ’30 said she is not looking for animal-related careers, but the marine biologist’s stories were interesting to her. Riley Rolfe ’30, who said she is petrified of birds, decided ornithology was not her thing. Young adds that to her credit, Rolfe confessed the phobia after completing the bird-calling assignment without complaint.

“I want to encourage girls to stick with math and science … and see that they’re capable of working toward these great careers.” -Jennifer Young

SEVENTH GRADERS GOT A HANDS-ON LESSON IN ENGINEERING, innovation, and making an environmental impact from Dr. Siripong Malasri, a registered professional engineer who conducts packaging research at Christian Brothers University. After watching a virtual consortium presentation and reading Dr. Malasri’s research on sustainable packaging solutions (which Garner Monroe ’25 also contributed to), our girls learned more from him about the science behind protective packaging materials when he visited the classroom.

Exploring STEM-Adjacent Careers

The STEM Explorations class entices girls to explore futures that are aligned with their interests and skills. When girls set aspirational goals at this age, they are intrinsically motivated to succeed academically and impact their academic journey before reaching upper school.

Although the exercise did not immediately result in converts to ornithology, girls raved about using a phone app that records bird calls to identify the birds, and then imitate the call to communicate with other birds. “The app will tell you what kind of bird it is after you record it. And then we went to record the ducks, and it told us what kind of duck it was. It was pretty cool,” said Rolfe, who is leaning toward something in the medical field and knows math and science will be important and a challenge for her. 

For a generation comfortable with using a popular phone app to quickly identify random songs, using similar technology to study animal behavior was not a stretch. Young said the experience is fun for the girls and illustrates the evolution of technology in a memorable way.

GIRLS USED AN APP CALLED MERLIN BIRD ID at the Katherine and John Dobbs Farm. The phone records and analyzes sounds to determine what type of birds are present. They also made simple duck calls from straws and attempted to use them, and the Merlin Bird ID app, to call the ducks at the Hutchison lake.

“We’ve seen how much STEM and technology have come into the world. Something may have started off as a non-STEM career, but now they’re using more technology,” said McCall. And that’s the lesson Young is trying to impart. 

“So many careers are STEM-adjacent. I’m not just talking to girls who are interested in math and science. I’m talking to all of them. A lot of things are STEM-adjacent. Girls have to make sure that they are pushing themselves toward that direction a little bit, whether it’s their favorite subject or not because careers are leaning that way,” said Young.
Back

Read More

  • Visit Visit
    Schedule a tour.
    You'll see first-hand what makes Hutchison special.
  • Apply Apply
    Ready?
    Start by filling out our online application.
  • Inquire Inquire
    Want to learn more?
    We'd love to tell you all about the Hutchison advantage.

Hutchison School

1740 Ridgeway Road
Memphis, Tennessee 38119
Phone: (901) 761-2220

Resources

Connect

Hutchison is the leading private girls school in Memphis for ages 2 years old through twelfth grade.