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It was just the sort of message that Associate Professor of Biology Larissa Williams and Assistant Professor of Biology Lori Banks wanted their students, a cohort of impressionable sophomores on the cusp of becoming science majors, to hear. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
These sophomore are STEM Scholars, in the second of a two-year academic program that helps incoming students who are interested in STEM majors begin to think like young scientists, problem-solve like young scientists, and, most of all, believe in themselves as young scientists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The program is part of a Bates effort to disrupt an old mindset about what it takes to succeed in majors related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, known as STEM. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The mindset, entrenched in U.S. higher education for generations, says that having the right stuff for STEM means that you survive while others fail. Indeed, introductory STEM courses are often known as just that: \u201cweed-out\u201d courses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And while weeding out might be valuable in gardening, finding a great NFL quarterback, or naming the winner of a TV reality show, it\u2019s now understood that weeding out in STEM courses only proves the shortcomings of the teaching model, not the student. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
At Bates, that\u2019s changing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe don’t believe that certain people can do STEM and certain people can’t,\u201d says April Hill, the Wagener Family Professor of Equity and Inclusion in STEM. \u201cIf you are accepted to Bates College, we believe that you are fully capable of not just getting a STEM degree, but thriving along the way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n STEM Scholars take a year-long First-Year Seminar, then a year-long course sophomore year. This fall\u2019s sophomore course had 30 students, taught in two sections by Williams and Banks. This fall\u2019s first-year STEM seminar was taught by Aleksander Diamond-Stanic (physics and astronomy) and Katy Ott (mathematics).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead of a divide and conquer approach, the STEM Scholars program focuses on support and community building. The STEM Scholars \u201cis not meant to be a competitive community,\u201d says Hill. \u201cIt’s where you can learn and thrive together while building your science skills.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the primary goal of the program is to better serve the demographic of students who, data show, have frequently suffered negative STEM outcomes at Bates and nationally \u2014 Black students, Latinx students, first-generation students \u2014 \u201cwe also have STEM Scholars who have other reasons to be part of a community that is interested in supporting each other,\u201d says Hill. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To that end, O’Hara was asked by Edgar Sarceno \u201823, a prospective math and physics major from Santa Fe, N.M., for advise on how to overcome coursework challenges. Lean on your community, O’Hara said, such as group study sessions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She also suggested a visualization strategy: Think about past successes to bolster confidence in meeting a current challenge. “When I get to a really hard task, I think back to when I struggled and succeeded.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n Hill meets with many of the 28 \u201calumni\u201d STEM Scholars who are now juniors and seniors, talking with them about STEM and, to help the program achieve sustainability, helping them train to be mentors to the program’s first- and second-year students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019ve gotten the most joy in the last two weeks, talking to these students. It\u2019s hard for all our students\u201d \u2014 required masks, physical distancing, and limited social and other activities \u2014 \u201cbut they\u2019re finding their own way to thrive. They’re studying like crazy \u2014 and feeling really proud of what they\u2019ve accomplished in these courses.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n During the Zoom session, O\u2019Hara did a fine job at meeting the sophomores where they are, on the verge of deeper STEM study. In a happy coincidence, her stories echoed themes of the college\u2019s Purposeful Work program, particularly how one\u2019s satisfaction and success in what we pursue must be aligned with what feels purposeful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPay attention to what you really enjoy,\u201d O\u2019Hara said, \u201cwhat you find most fun and exciting, as well as actively seeking new and different experiences.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Banks says she often talks to students about what feels purposeful to them \u2014 about \u201cbeing aware of what your own personality is telling you, what skill sets you\u2019re developing, what things you\u2019re drawn to \u2014 and how you might be able to best serve the world, the community, your school, whatever, just by being you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This fall, O\u2019Hara was one of 10 scholars, researchers, and other professionals that Banks, Williams, and other professors<\/a> brought into their STEM Scholar classrooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe speakers contributed to many of our course goals,\u201d explains Williams, such as bolstering students\u2019 confidence and enthusiasm in science and math, and having a growth mindset. \u201cLoral spoke explicitly to this,\u201d said Williams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n O\u2019Hara, who Zoomed in from Star City, the earthbound home of the Russian space program, traced her path from her childhood in Houston to becoming an astronaut based in Russia, where she continues her training until her chance to blast off on a mission to the International Space Station.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Long gone are the Apollo days when being an astronaut meant you were either a commander or a pilot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n O\u2019Hara\u2019s 13-member class of astronauts includes a Navy submarine warfare engineer; a microbiologist who studies organisms in subsurface environments, such as caves and deep-sea sediments; an emergency room physician; a commander of a Navy flight test squadron; a medical surgeon and combat helicopter pilot; and a SpaceX engineer with unusual prior experience: as an ice driller in Antarctica and commercial fisherman in Alaska.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s a huge diversity of backgrounds,\u201d O\u2019Hara says. \u201cThis is one of my favorite things about the astronaut office: It shows that there’s no one path to success.\u201d The diversity of the astronaut class also underscores another goal of the course, says Williams, \u201cthat the best science and math is done by diverse teams.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recalling her own path, O\u2019Hara shared how, as a child, she loved to explore, hiking in the woods and mountains. Eventually it led her to latch onto the idea of being an astronaut (growing up in Houston also helped foment the idea). <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI wrote a letter to NASA, and they wrote me back and told me to follow my dreams and study a STEM field,\u201d O\u2019Hara said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n After earning a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering at the University of Kansas and a master\u2019s in aeronautics and astronautics from Purdue, she did deep-ocean engineering and operations work at Woods Hole (Mass.) Oceanographic Institution, including experiences with the famed human-occupied vehicle Alvin<\/a> and the remotely operated vehicle Jason<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n O\u2019Hara, who became friends with Williams while at Woods Hole, was selected to NASA\u2019s astronaut training program in August 2017. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Careers can have a tidy and linear appearance when we look back, O\u2019Hara says. Sitting in Star City, where she is now eligible for a mission assignment, it might seem \u201ceasy to connect the dots and see how the pieces of your life come together.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n But she assured Williams\u2019 students that when you\u2019re 18 and looking ahead, it\u2019s not always clear how things will fall into place. \u201cThat was definitely the case for me,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf you had asked me in high school, if I would be working on deep-ocean research vessels by my 30s, I probably would’ve given you a sideways glance and asked, \u2018What’s a research vessel?\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The message resonated with Mariam Josyula \u201823 of Longboat Key, Fla. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “It’s inspiring to talk with people who come from different backgrounds and taken different paths, but have still become so successful. You have to work hard and persevere, but your dreams are possible.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara joined a sophomore science class as part of program that seeks to disrupt the “weed-out” approach to STEM education.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":137547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,217],"tags":[11728,9814,12110,11356],"class_list":["post-137543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-science-technology","tag-april-l-horton","tag-larissa-williams","tag-lori-banks","tag-stem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137543"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137592,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137543\/revisions\/137592"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Professor](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2019\/05\/190425_April_Hill_lab_0565.jpg\")
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