At UChicago Charter Schools’ Woodlawn campus, 20 rising 6th and 7th grade girls from the South Side recently wrapped up a two-week STEM camp. Campers practiced coding and quantum computing, learned the fundamentals of cryptography, applied algebraic reasoning, and taste tested astronaut ice cream, among other STEM-centric activities. The experience and several others like it were made possible, in part, by a new fund and a broader University of Chicago effort to make the sciences more inclusive.
Led by UChicago in partnership with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Argonne National Laboratory, and Fermilab National Accelerator Laboratory and coordinated by UChicago’s Office of Civic Engagement (OCE) and the Office of Science, Innovation, National Labs, and Global Initiatives (SING), the Inclusive Innovation initiative aims to engage local students, educators, and workers and connect them to the city’s growing scientific ecosystem, thereby helping to generate a diverse talent pipeline in the sciences and spur economic growth on the historically under-resourced South Side. The annual $150,000 Inclusive Innovation Fund is one way the initiative is starting to lay a foundation for positive impact.
Expanding Entry Points
In the case of the Southside STEM Camp in Woodlawn, the Inclusive Innovation funding allowed for UChicago STEM Education (UCSE), a Center within the Physical Sciences division, to partner with the UChicago Charter Schools to scale their existing coed South Side STEM Camps for rising 5th and 6th graders to dedicate a cohort specifically to girls.
“We know that girls are underrepresented in STEM fields. They’re often intimidated by STEM-related topics such as mathematics and engineering, and, as a result, not going into STEM-related careers,” UCSE Director of Education Outreach Denise Porter said. “We just wanted to see what it would be like to have an all-girls class and engage them in STEM-related activities and provide them with opportunities to see and work with women in STEM-related fields. Along with content, the focus was also on building a sense of community for the girls to bond, and it’s been amazing.”
Designing these types of opportunities and entry points for South Siders to gain from new and growing areas of science is at the heart of the broader Inclusive Innovation initiative.
Other Inclusive Innovation Fund recipients are putting their grants toward everything from encouraging underrepresented youth to pursue careers in healthcare, to hosting an on-campus science fair for South Side middle schoolers and teachers, to organizing college tours for local high school students at STEM-focused colleges and universities in the region. In total, nine programs were awarded funding. They include:
- MedCEEP Summer Pipeline Program (UChicago Medicine)
- South Side STEM Camp for Girls (UChicago STEM Education)
- Ready, Set, STEM! in Bronzeville (UChicago STEM Education)
- Open Quantum Initiative Fellowship (Chicago Quantum Exchange)
- Neighborhood Schools Program STEM Corps (Office of Civic Engagement)
- Inclusive On-Ramp (Department of Computer Science and Office of Civic Engagement)
- Data4All (Data Science Institute)
- No Small Matters Fair (Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering)
- STEM College Tours (Office of Civic Engagement)
A Holistic Approach
For Debbie Leslie, Director of Education Outreach and Early Childhood Initiatives at UCSE, support from the Inclusive Innovation Fund offered new opportunities to think not only about who needs to be reached by this programming, but when. The fund helped expand UCSE’s Ready, Set, STEM! program—which aims to get Chicago preschoolers excited about math and science—to serve an additional cohort of students at Ida B. Wells Preparatory Elementary School in Bronzeville and experiment with a new program structure this summer, for instance. And Leslie says the program strives to support teachers and parents as well.
“These kids are deciding very early on whether they are good at STEM, whether they like it— whether bugs are icky, whether math is hard and doesn’t make sense,” Leslie said. “Children’s attitudes are often influenced by the attitudes of the grown-ups in their lives at this age, their teachers and their families who may inadvertently message: 'This produces anxiety for me,’ ‘I’m not good at this,’ and this pattern is particularly true for little girls. Research at UChicago has shown that parents can unwittingly and disappointingly pass these anxieties to their kids. So, we’re definitely working directly with the kids, but the program is designed to also build enthusiasm and confidence amongst their parents for what early STEM is and how much their kids have the potential to love it.”
Rethinking Workforce Pathways
As more quantum-science-focused start-up companies plant roots on the South Side, opportunities to enter the nascent quantum workforce are sprouting up as well. Often, these companies are in the early stages with little budget for summer interns, so Chicago Quantum Exchange (CQE) CEO Kate Waimey Timmerman and her team used Inclusive Innovation funding to place interns, such as City Colleges of Chicago (CCC) student Cody Castle, in such roles. Castle is a fellow in CQE’s Open Quantum Initiative (OQI) Undergraduate Fellowship currently interning at the Hyde Park office of Great Lakes Crystal Technologies. Following an initial summer at Argonne National Laboratory, the fellowship paired Castle with Great Lakes—which participated in the inaugural cohort of CQE and the Polsky Center’s Duality quantum accelerator program—in an effort to deepen his integration in quantum information science and engineering and broaden his understanding of and experiences with the breadth of quantum research.
Castle and other CCC students were connected to the opportunity as part of a formal, Inclusive Innovation-driven Memorandum of Understanding between UChicago and CCC. The partnership was designed to strengthen STEM education and career opportunities for local students and create a more diverse field of professionals entering the sciences. The CQE funding is just one example of it at work.
Perla Bran, who is studying science and engineering at CCC’s Wilbur Wright College, is a first-year OQI fellow spending her summer working with UChicago’s Pritzker Nanofabrication Facility. Bran had never heard of quantum science before a UChicago presentation at her college introduced her to its possibilities and the OQI fellowship.
“Being able to be a part of this new scientific era and new technology has been very intriguing to me,” Bran said. “I’ve loved being in a room where quantum isn’t science fiction but it’s actually something we’re trying to make happen. I’ve loved being here—not only the information they gave me but the environment itself.”
The experience has given Bran a better understanding of the science but also of potential pathways to quantum roles in academia or industry she could follow after she earns her associate’s degree from Wilbur Wright next year and goes on to pursue her bachelor’s degree at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where she has a spot guaranteed through another CCC pathway program. She’s also excited for other CCC students to look to her as an example going forward. Partnerships like the one between CCC and UChicago and the broader Inclusive Innovation effort, Bran says, can show underrepresented students like her that they should explore roles that might seem intimidating in these emerging fields.
“As community college students, we aren’t always seen as as valuable as other students because we didn’t follow the traditional pathway to university for whatever reason,” she said. “But I think it’s so important to have these partnerships because having that community college perspective creates diversity. Being in the room is very important. When I started with OQI, I did feel kind of underqualified because the rest of the cohort were from MIT, or Stanford, Harvard, and I was like what am I doing here? But I had to remember we all went through the same application process. They picked me for a reason and my voice also matters.”
