Women In STEM Day

Dr Michelle Juchau [00:00:00] I think one thing today that has been really powerful has been our alumni. Many have only just left university, but they're in good careers already. And having the session with the college to say, this is where you could be in five years, six years, has been inspirational for them.

Laura Watford [00:00:19] On the Stemunity Stand, we had some limelight activities set up. This is an activity we actually ran with 107 key stage 2 students. And so I talked to them about, you know, the importance of them being positive role models to younger students, because if you can't see it, you can't be it.

Hanaa Lakhdari [00:00:33] They've had the opportunities to ask me different questions and it's truly got them thinking about where they need to go from now in order to be a pharmacist in the future.

Aletia French [00:00:43] It's 14, 15, sometimes even younger, where you're being expected to choose things like your GCSEs. So introducing STEM to people at a really, really young age is really important to help them know that that's an option.

Laura Watford [00:00:57] We are still massively underrepresented across many STEM industries and actually it starts in education, it starts with building that STEM capital from a very young age. Being able to see somebody like you working and creating that pathway allows young people to look up and think I could do that one day and actually what she does is really valuable and it's a really exciting job.

Aletia French [00:01:19] I spent quite a lot of my time in my first couple of years not sure that I'd be able to do as well as I expected so I think it's really important to highlight that women are just as important and have ideas that a man might not have.

Dr Michelle Juchau [00:01:32] Talking to our alumni they say well actually we bring something else to the table we bring a different dynamic so actually having more diverse teams in organisations can actually encourage innovation it can encourage new thoughts so having more women coming through that pipeline is going to make our country more innovative in the long term.

Amanda Thomas [00:01:53] No subject is actually dealt with in isolation. I've seen how our students, our girls particularly, have gone on to create really successful careers in the built environment.

Laura Watford [00:02:04] I started at the University of Portsmouth studying a science degree and went into the classroom, taught science in Portsmouth 16 years and now I'm a teaching fellow at the University of Portsmouth. I was really fortunate to you know have a great science education, have some great opportunities and that has made me even more determined that every single young person should have exactly the same opportunities to build their own STEM capital.

Hanaa Lakhdari [00:02:27] I was very lucky as a child to be involved in many different outreach programmes at many different institutions and that got me into the sort of idea of I want to do a career in healthcare.

Amanda Thomas [00:02:39] The doors are open wide, all the girls have to do is walk through them.

Aletia French [00:02:43] Find out what your options are, speak to your friends, your family, your careers advisors, your mentors, anybody and just go for it.