When the lunch bell rang on Feb. 5, students rushed into the rally court to see what clubs they would consider joining in 2018. Similar to many other clubs, WiSTEM had their own poster board up for the new semester, showcasing facts about the club and women in the STEM field.
Senior and vice president Kriti Lalwani mentioned how they were inactive in the first semester because of complications with the renewal of WiSTEM, which caused them to turn in their form for continuation late. However, the club is ready to start having meetings again. The club plans to focus on promoting BARE, which stands for Bay Area Research Exposition. It is an event in which WiSTEM clubs from different schools answer a prompt in order to potentially solve worldly problem in relation to the tech industry.
“A lot of the WiSTEM clubs at different high schools in this area come together to put on [BARE],” Lalwani said. “It’s a way for girls to do a research project … you get to meet with panelists who are actual women working in STEM fields … We’re also planning on having some field trips and some guest speakers come in to come in and talk.”
Lalwani expresses her personal excitement on starting the club this year and describes how it helped her.The club opened opportunities to explore different areas to help with ideas in the future.
“I’ve been in [WiSTEM] since freshman year and I thought it was a good way to get introduced to different STEM fields,” Lalwani said. “It also it helped me discover some ideas for research and just like talking to women in those fields.”
Freshman Claire Wen signed up for the club for the first time this year. She recounts her own interests in the STEM fields and hopes the club could assist her in pursuing those interests. Even though it was her first time hearing about it, Wen joined anticipating the benefits of the club.
“I haven’t really heard about this other than at school and then I just saw the poster board and thought it looked interesting,” Wen said. “I’m pretty into math and science-y stuff and then I thought it’d be pretty cool to join the club.”
Sophomore Manogna Rajanala also signed up for the club this year. She said that joining WiSTEM would help her explore different STEM fields and believes that women in stem should be more prevalent.
“It’s really amazing that there are a lot of clubs that promote women in technology and its fun to explore the opportunities that are available for us to see if we like the field or if we don’t,” Rajanala said.
Rajanala is interested in engineering and computer science and thinks the advancement of technology as well as different innovations around the world are astonishing. She also believes in the idea of people working together to achieve a common goal or create something new, and clubs like WiSTEM allow that exposure.
Lalwani appreciates the motivation the club gave her in her freshman year and believes that WiSTEM can do that now with new freshman.
“[WiSTEM] inspires you so I’d like to leave that for other freshmen right now and of course any other grades too so I’m glad that we’re starting up,” Lalwani said. “I would say that if you are interested in STEM or even if you think you might just want to hear about some interesting guest speakers come in to talk you should come visit us in room B103 on Wednesdays at lunch.”
