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Growing up in the Long Beach area, Alexandra Hurtado was fascinated by science classes and began dreaming of becoming a doctor.
Hurtado has kept quiet about her career goals for years, fearing people will disappoint her. As one teacher told her, working in the entertainment industry or as a newscaster would “suit your personality” better.
But she regained her confidence, earned a bachelor’s degree in molecular biology from California State University, Long Beach, and now works as a stem cell researcher at City of Hope while attending medical school.
Hurtado was one of more than 230 Long Beach middle school students who gathered Friday for the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) conference at Sato Academy, a math and science-focused high school in Long Beach. She hopes her story will inspire other girls. Unified School District.
After hearing Hurtado’s keynote address, the girls split up to participate in about 10 hands-on workshops led by women in STEM fields. They measured the crash forces generated by the toy cars they had built. They tested different materials as potential water treatment filters. They learned how technicians perform MRI and ultrasound imaging. They then built structures out of dry spaghetti and marshmallows and checked their stability on unstable ground (in this case, a jelly-like pot).
Sato Academy Principal Veronica Coleman uses the event, sponsored by the Long Beach Chapter of the American Association of Women’s Colleges, to market her school to prospective students.
“We have a lot of young women coming from north and west Long Beach who don’t even know the school exists,” Coleman said.
“When they come into our classroom and see all the rocketry that we do, the aerospace that we do, the flight simulators, the wind tunnels, the anatomical merge tables, that kind of thing happens. They can see our students and they can think of themselves as being here, in a place where they didn’t even have that concept before. ”
And after attending Friday’s conference, girls who choose other high schools will see others like them getting jobs they love. Hurtado said that during her internship at the hospital, she realized she was the only Latina woman working there, which inspired her to continue pursuing her dreams.
Diana Craighead, president of the Long Beach Unified School Board, said events like the conference at Sato Academy encourage girls to pursue careers in math and science, even if their chosen fields are dominated by men. He said it will help show that he can be successful.
“We’re still a minority, and that’s why it’s important,” Craighead said. “We still don’t earn as much as men. We need that representation.”
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