Our Stories
Nicole Felix-Tovar
“I became close friends with Sasha and other early STEMchats members by connecting through our shared passion for STEM and equitable education. I’m a Colombian-Ecuadorian, first-generation and low-income student who attended an underserved, overpopulated and almost entirely minority (Latinx and Black) high school in Florida. The magnet International Baccalaureate (IB) program was offered, but a such a low percentage of students participated in the program and it created a well-defined rift between already underserved students. Although my school boasted its IB program, it was equally underfunded and misunderstood. Many of my peers did not attend higher education institutions after high school. The STEM department was also weak regardless of educational track or rigor of courses; STEM outreach and community programs to enrich student interests were nonexistent. I’ve been able to realize how possible student-to-student change and advocacy are through connecting with other students across the country, such as those in STEMchats.”
Sasha Kolesnikov
“I became close to Nicole and other early STEMchats members through a shared interest in dismantling barriers between science and society, particularly in regards to certain social inequities. I come from a low-income family of Russian immigrants in a primarily white and upper-middle class California town. Despite already being such a small school, the lack of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity at my high school was coupled with a famous stress culture and an intense focus on academics over extracurriculars. Any leftover energy people had for extracurriculars (i.e Model UN) was spent on fundraising, since my school placed the burden of funding on club members, or finding students to join, due to a prevailing apathy that stemmed from such a single-minded focus on academics. Though I will always be grateful for the things my high school taught me, my first hand exposure to the dangers of a lack of diversity and mindset of only seeing education through a limited academic lens is what motivates me to continuously progress STEMchats towards its mission with the rest of the STEMchats team!”
Our educational journeys highlight the diverse academic experiences that FGLI students experience; the feeling of “not knowing what we don’t know” ties us all together. A coalition of students with passions for STEM banding together to motivate their peers to learn more about STEM alleviates some common obstacles. Even more so, it empowers them to keep learning and impacting others along the way. STEMchats was created not because Nicole and Sasha lost faith in their schools, but because they felt that contributing to creating peer-to-peer STEM opportunities would create more direct, targeted, and effective change, in combination with long-term policy efforts.
Our Journey (So Far)
Since 2019, STEMchats has created five different programs (free for all participants) in order to tackle inequitable opportunities in STEM for students of underrepresented backgrounds. Conducted almost entirely remotely (and currently all remotely due to Covid-19), STEMchats has team members from all over the United States and countries such as Australia, Palestine, and Canada. Our programming aims to impact both students in major cities and more rural communities through virtual and physical remote programming. Ultimately, STEMchats hopes to expand our reach internationally, working towards equitable STEM education for all, regardless of geographical barriers. Check out the “Our Programs” tab to learn more details about each of our 5 programs.
STEMchats’s team is composed mainly of students who identify with one or more of the following categories: first-generation, low-income, women, people of color, LGBTQ+, disabled, and students who attended a rural or underfunded high school. Students of these backgrounds often have barriers in addition to higher education and STEM, including food and housing insecurity, environmental hazards, and more. The solutions to many of these issues require STEM, but even more so, awareness and understanding of people from all backgrounds. Getting more underrepresented students like us into STEM fields will not only increase diversity in these fields, but allow change in our communities to be made by the people who understand them the most: ourselves.
