WiSTEM exposition insightful for officers

About 150 students from Saratoga, Lynbrook and Monta Vista High Schools attended the Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (WiSTEM) exposition on April 5 at the YouTube headquarters in Mountain View. The event was planned by WiSTEM club presidents juniors Sonal Pai and Sabrina Chen in coordination with the officers of WiSTEM clubs at Lynbrook and Monta Vista.

The exposition included a poster board competition in which participants presented their ideas for preventing oil spills. The competition was judged by Bay Area STEM professionals, while female guest speakers encouraged the students to pursue careers in STEM fields.

The first, second and third place winners of the competition were awarded science related prizes, such as a subscription to a science magazine. Pai, Chen and senior Katherine Sun attended the exposition but did not participate in the poster board competition.

“The project presentations were really great,” Pai said. “I wasn’t expecting such detailed posters, but everyone put a lot of time into their thoughts and ideas and it really paid off.”

According to Chen, the event gave the officers inspiration as to how to improve the club for next year.

“We didn’t nearly have as many Saratoga participants as we would have liked, mostly because Saratoga WiSTEM is a brand new club this year,” Chen said. “However, planning such a large event with the other, more experienced WiSTEM Clubs gave us many ideas, like publicizing long before the event is underway and using incentives to have people sign up.”