St. Patrick’s College Participates in Women in STEM Program

St. Patrick’s College Participates in Women in STEM Program

St. Patrick’s College in Campbelltown, NSW is one of the first schools to participate in the new Women in STEM (click here) program, released by LifeJourney in March under the Day of STEM platform. The Women in STEM program is aimed to increase interest and build awareness about STEM career opportunities, focusing on inspiring young women through female mentors who’ve navigated success in their field.

Debra Bourne, Leader of eLearning and Library Services, at St. Patrick’s College and prominent voice in ICT teacher networks took her students through the Women in STEM program.

“What stood out to me about this program was its innate ability to show our girls what life outside of Campbelltown can look like. We have our girls engaged across a number of different STEM initiatives and this program shows students what they can do with those skills in a career field. Having female mentors helps encourage girls that a STEM career has many opportunities.”

The Women in STEM program connects students with female professionals working across different STEM industries in Australia on a virtual platform that’s accessible anytime, anywhere. Students learn about projects their mentors are working on, hear their perspectives on what it takes to be successful and explore pathways to a STEM career.

“When looking at the resources, Year 9 student Ines Hart said “I didn’t realise that so many different skills are important. It’s not just the maths, science and technology, but things like listening and leadership are important too”.

After experiencing the mentor journeys, students also participate in an interactive press conference with their mentors to explore different topic facing Women in STEM and weigh in by providing their own perspective on each question.

If you are a teacher that would like to share your experience with the Day of STEM program, please contact (tim@lifejourney) and we can share your story with our network of schools.

Figure 1:St Patrick’s College Campbelltown students Ines Hart, Felicity Davis and Annabella Nelson-Whitelaw