We are a team of diverse high school students from all over Chicago with the goal of increasing diversity in STEM.
Backed by the Global Leaders Program, an organization funded by the Illinois Institute of Technology, as well as several other partners such as Burns SMCD, we are driven to put a real dent in the issue of diversity in STEM by inspiring those underrepresented.
To accomplish our goal, we are using a multi-pronged approach:
-
Launch multiple STEM summits targeted at students transitioning from 8^th^ to 9^th^ grade. These will use creative hands on activities to spark an interest in STEM while avoiding other "preachier" methods that do not create any genuine interest in the STEM fields.
-
Launch a project with an impact well beyond what we could ever hope to achieve in a year by making the knowledge we gain from running summits, as well as from implementing hands on activities, freely available to all through the use of The United Innovators GitHub Organization. This will host a website with a blog providing information on our progress, our triumphs, and our tribulations, as well as connecting those interested in the STEM fields to the appropriate resources. We will also use a second repository to provide the information necessary to set up the activities we designed for our summits.
Together, these two angles will allow us to inspire young students during their transition to high school to pursue their interest in STEM while also having a snowball effect that will greatly increase the impact of our work.