The American Heart Association’s metro Jackson affiliate will be hosting its inaugural “STEM Goes Red” experience to encourage middle school girls to pursue a career in science, engineering, technology, and mathematics.
On Monday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Mississippi Children’s Museum, female middle school students from Jackson public schools will hear from industry leaders from Ergon, Nissan, Mississippi Baptist Medical Center, and the Bean Path.
“We are very invested in the science piece of STEM because we want more females to come into the science fields and to help us with research focused on women,” Metro Jackson American Heart Association Director Jennifer Hopping said on Good Things with Rebecca Turner. “Our ‘go red for women’ platform is the perfect place to do this. That is where ‘Stem Goes Red’ was born.”
The keynote speaker is Dr. Nashlie H. Sephus, a computer engineer and entrepreneur specializing in machine learning and algorithmic bias identification. She is a technology evangelist at Amazon Web Services and co-founder and chief executive officer of Bean Path, a nonprofit startup company developing Jackson Tech District — a planned community and business incubator in Mississippi’s capital city.
Economic projections indicate that there could be as many as 2.4 million unfilled STEM jobs in the future. The STEM employment gap is further compounded by persistent diversity challenges, as women and minorities comprise 70% of college students, but of 100 female students working toward a bachelor’s degree, only three will work in a STEM job 10 years after graduation.
Hopping believes it’s important to reach young females in the middle school ranks and promote the concept of them entertaining a potential future in a STEM field before they make a career decision in high school.
“If you don’t have these kids making these decisions in middle school, then they’re already pathing a lot of their career choices in high school now prior to going to college. It’s important to hit up those middle school girls and then that way they can pick their fields of interest when they get to high school,” Hopping added.
Go Red for Women is nationally sponsored by CVS Health, with STEM Goes Red locally sponsored by Ergon and Mississippi Baptist Health System. More information can be found here.
