Eureka! Lab

Teen interviews science role models to inspire others

Armed with a GoPro, a high school student informs her peers about STEM careers

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Emily Koehne (right) interviewed Sylvia Acevedo (left), leader of the Girl Scouts of the United States, for her YouTube video series about women in STEM.

E. Koehne

By Bethany Brookshire

Girls who want to go into science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) sometimes have a tough time finding role models. That’s because men still outnumber women in many of these fields. Some teens might think that’s a problem they’ll solve by going into a STEM field and becoming a role model themselves. But Emily Koehne, 17, decided not to wait. The senior at the Immaculate Heart Academy in Washington, N.J., actively searches out female role models in STEM and shares her interviews with them on her own YouTube channel.

“I never had any role models for girls in STEM when I was younger,” Emily explains. For instance, female scientists on TV were weird or geeky, she says. “They were never portrayed in a positive manner.”

The teen got a chance to change that when she entered a contest run by Marvel and the National Academy of Sciences that challenged girls to create videos answering STEM-based questions. (The contest was also sponsored by Society for Science & the Public, which publishes Science News for Students and this blog). Emily created a video in which she 3-D printed a doll named “STEMily” with whom she discussed problems of women in STEM.

She didn’t win the contest. But Emily didn’t mind. She had discovered just how much she liked making videos. “I couldn’t stop there,” she says. Using money she earned through pet sitting, the teen bought a GoPro camera and set up a website, which she used to start her own YouTube channel, STEMily<K>.

Emily set out to interview women in STEM about their careers and share those interviews with teachers and fellow students. But she quickly ran into a problem. She didn’t have any STEM role models. Encouraged by her former science teacher Sharon Mistretta, the teen searched the internet for women in STEM to interview. Then she sent emails asking for those women to speak with her.

Many of the scientists responded and were eager to participate. Dianna Cowern, a science communicator known for her YouTube channel Physics Girl, was one of them. She was thrilled to see someone in high school promoting women in STEM. Emily, Cowern says, “clearly has thought through issues that women face in STEM, in a way I hadn’t thought about until I was out of college. I was really impressed with her.”

Emily plans, shoots and edits the videos herself, spending hours on each one. “The interviews take an hour,” she says, but the final videos are usually only 8 to 12 minutes long. “There’s so much great information,” Emily notes. “But girls won’t spend an hour [watching], so I try to … put the most important information in that I think girls really want to know.”

The teen hopes to inspire other teens with the scientists she interviews. She’s already found a new science hero in Sylvia Acevedo. Trained as an engineer, Acevedo now heads the Girls Scouts of the United States of America. And she gladly sat down for an interview with Emily. “She’s impacting girls on a level I’d love to achieve some day,” the teen says of Acevedo. “She’s taken her experience and now she’s giving back.”

Emily’s YouTube channel is still new, and her goal is to post four videos a month. The teen is trying to get the word out about her project to attract more viewers to her channel. She’s also looking for more STEM role models who blend several interests, such as science and fashion. “I want to show girls you can be well rounded and interested in STEM as well as interested in other things, so girls won’t be discouraged and pick the other things over STEM,” she says.

And her new hobby has made her more determined than ever to pursue a career in computer science. She says, “I’m doing what I love.”

Emily Koehne interviews PhysicsGirl, Dianna Cowern, about her work. E. Koehne

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Power Words

More About Power Words

computer science     The scientific study of the principles and use of computers. Scientists who work in this field are known as computer scientists.

engineer     A person who uses science to solve problems. As a verb, to engineer means to design a device, material or process that will solve some problem or unmet need.

engineering     The field of research that uses math and science to solve practical problems.

high school     A designation for grades nine through 12 in the U.S. system of compulsory public education. High-school graduates may apply to colleges for further, advanced education.

physics     The scientific study of the nature and properties of matter and energy. Classical physics is an explanation of the nature and properties of matter and energy that relies on descriptions such as Newton’s laws of motion. Quantum physics, a field of study that emerged later, is a more accurate way of explaining the motions and behavior of matter. A scientist who works in such areas is known as a physicist.

society     An integrated group of people or animals that generally cooperate and support one another for the greater good of them all.

STEM     An acronym (abbreviation made using the first letters of a term) for science, technology, engineering and math.

technology     The application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry — or the devices, processes and systems that result from those efforts.

3-D printing     A means of producing physical items — including toys, foods and even body parts — using a machine that takes instructions from a computer program. That program tells the machine how and where to lay down successive layers of some raw material (the “ink”) to create a three-dimensional object.

About Bethany Brookshire

Bethany Brookshire was a longtime staff writer at Science News Explores and is the author of the book Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains. She has a Ph.D. in physiology and pharmacology and likes to write about neuroscience, biology, climate and more. She thinks Porgs are an invasive species.