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More than 500 girls inspired by leaders in STEM field at annual conference

On Tuesday, hundreds of girls from across Western Washington got out of their regular classrooms and into the world of STEM.

They took part in an annual one day conference at Edmonds Community College called Expanding Your Horizons.

The goal is to expose female students in grades eight through 12 to the fields of science, technology, engineering and math.

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“I think there’s a disparity between women and men in STEM field so the whole point of this is to show female students that they can do this and get a job in a STEM career,” said Michelle Platt, the outreach and recruitment manager at Edmonds Community College.

ECC has hosted this event for the past 7 years and the number of attendees has grown to the most this year at more than 500.

The students come from various school districts to learn from a panel of all-female speakers who are leaders in their STEM industry.

We talked to ninth-grader Kenan Yilma who said she wants to go into the medical field.

“I think it’s so cool to be in a room full of girls who all have the same mentality and want to do the same thing,” said Yilma, who is 15-years-old. “I always love math. It’s not hard for me. Science is a little challenging but I like to take on the challenge and see how far I can go.”

Her classmate, Serena Polendo, wants to join the U.S. Air Force and become either a structural engineer or marine biologist.

“Especially when you are so passionate about it, it feels better when more girls are joining into it. It’s becoming a community,” Polendo said.

Right now national statistics show while women make up half of the total U.S. college educated work force, only 29 percent of them are employed in the fields of science and engineering.

Organizers of this conference said exposing more young women to STEM, as early as possible, will help change the trend and the future of this field.

“I think they see themselves. They see a professional woman in a STEM field who are rocking it because STEM girls rock the world,” said Platt.