Mo Charnot
Students in the Animal Rescue workshop practiced veterinary science with volunteers from Roadrunner Veterinary Emergency & Specialty Hospital, and gave check-ups to stuffed animals before diagnosing and treating their assigned ailments.
When more than 150 students from across New Mexico gathered at the Santa Fe Community College campus on Oct. 19, everyone left with three new skills under their belts. Choosing from 12 workshops, some coded a short musical piece with Micro Bits, another group learned to purify water, and others now know how to give their pet a routine check-up.
But for at least one person on hand, the annual STEM Pathways For Girls Conference was a full-circle moment.
Hosted by STEM Santa Fe, a local nonprofit organization with a focus on providing science technology, engineering, and math programming for youth, the annual conference is intended for girls and gender non-conforming students from fifth through eighth grade.
In one of the 12 classrooms, students learned veterinary science directly from employees at the Roadrunner Veterinary Emergency & Specialty Hospital located in Algodones. Plush cats, dogs and even a horse were presented to students alongside the tools they needed to perform a check-up, and students learned the condition of their “patients” and how to best treat them. An orange-and-white stuffed cat named Socks, for example, needed treatment for a broken leg.
Dr. Amanda Rouse, one of the veterinarians at Roadrunner, tells SFR she volunteered to partake in this year’s conference after hearing her coworker, Dr. Kyanna Martinez, would be running the class. She says part of the reason she volunteered is because she never had the opportunity to discover her career path when she was entering middle school.
“I feel like being exposed to not just the math, the science, but how this translates into what we can do with our life and a vocation…if this sparks, for at least even one person, ‘Oh my gosh, this is what I want to do with my life,’ and you learn that young, that’s so impactful,” Rouse says. “I wish we had this and physics and other other science exposure when I was younger.”
According to STEM Santa Fe Programs & Volunteer Manager Leanna McClure (Oglala Lakota and Mescalero Apache), the number of students in attendance nearly doubled compared to last year’s conference, which had about 86 students. She says bad weather kept attendance from swelling to more than 200, noting about 210 students registered ahead of time.
“There was a lot of great reception and interest,” McClure tells SFR. “We definitely want to think strategically about outreach to different schools and communities … perhaps a little more ahead of time for the 2025 conference.”
STEM Santa Fe has been running its annual programs specifically for young girls since about 2018, although McClure says the program used to be called “Expanding Your Horizons.” In addition to the annual conference, the STEM Pathways For Girls program also hosts monthly workshops presented by experts in specific STEM fields. Local educators partner with professionals from the Santa Fe Creative Coding Initiative, Apple, Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories to provide lessons.
“I think first and foremost, it’s really beneficial to have this time and space, particularly when girls and gender non-conforming students are getting into fifth and sixth grade and into middle school,” McClure says. “There’s a lot of different societal school pressures…[Girls] don’t always get encouraged to really explore math and science in particular, and that’s like when you lose those students.”
One student who was particularly impacted by participating in the STEM Pathways For Girls Program is Kateri Pena (Santa Clara Pueblo), who graduated from the Santa Fe Indian School in 2023. McClure was Pena’s teacher, and initially introduced her class to the program in sixth grade during the yearly conference.
“Looking back, it kind of did set me up on a path towards technology, especially because my father, as well, is super into that,” Pena tells SFR.
This fall, Pena says, she became an intern with STEM Santa Fe, and she’s now set to present the next monthly STEM workshop based on her own passion: digital storytelling.
Pena first became interested in digital media during her high school years at SFIS while she took dual credit classes on the subject at SFCC. Now, as a student at SFCC, she’s majoring in film.
“I ended up really enjoying just the whole process—being with a group of my buddies at school, we’d all just have fun making these things,” Pena says. “In my senior year, [when I] had to start thinking about careers, I kind of realized that it’s something I like to do, and also it’s very versatile in terms of career. That’s what led me down that path.”
Pena is also working on her own film project, writing a script for a horror film she says is “very New Mexico-centered.”
In her upcoming STEM Santa Fe workshop on Nov. 9, she’ll help students realize their own artistic visions alongside Dwayne Joe, who was one of her former teachers at SFIS and a Mobile Storytelling Director. At the workshop, they will teach students to develop a storyboard and capture a short film using Apple devices from 9:30 to 11:30 am.
Pena says in the workshop, she’ll offer different formats for students to work with, such as an advertisement or a movie trailer, and then walk them through the process of organizing video and audio footage.
“It’s mainly just going to be learning how to get your creative voice out and how to use it effectively. I’m super-psyched,” Pena says. “I know it’s a little weird because I’m still a student myself, technically, but I think it’s kind of awesome that I even have this opportunity. It’s something I’m really passionate about, and I think I’m able to help these kids figure out ways to tell their own stories, because I know each one of us has something very unique to us.”
McClure says she and Pena developed the idea for the digital storytelling workshop as a way to show students how to “use their agency and voice” through filmmaking. Pena believes the workshop shows students that “there’s art in technology.”
“Just showing kids that that’s even available to them, I think is cool,” she says. “Because that changed my life, and hopefully it will for them too.”
More Education coverage online: Up and coming local artists show off their talents at the 3rd Annual Santa Fe Regional Exhibition for High School and Middle School Arts through Dec. 5.
Digital Storytelling Workshop:
9:30-11:30 am Saturday, Nov. 9. Free. Santa Fe Community College, Classroom 607. 6401 Richards Ave., (505) 570-5402.
Register at stemsantafe.org/nov24-spfg-registration.
