After five months of hard work, Emily Kvitek— SCHS senior— finally made her vision a reality. Saturday, September 16, 2017, Emily Kvitek hosted her Genius Project convention, “The Future STEMs From Us.” This event was created to inspire young girls about science and their futures in the STEM field.

The Genius Project is an idea implemented in Sage Creek’s English curriculum. Its purpose is for kids to be able to be curious while learning life skills and positively impacting the community. Genius Projects vary from conventions like Kvitek’s to building a 3D printed guitar.

Kvitek wanted to reach out to young girls in the  Carlsbad community, inviting 5th to 8th grade girls to come to the Bobcat Arena and learn about the different careers and interests in STEM. Eleven companies were at the event, from Planck Aerosystems to Thermo Fisher; almost every aspect of science was covered. The convention had six stations, each set up by a company with an activity for the young attendees to experiment with. With about six girls in each rotation and about a 100 girls total, Kvitek introduced countless future careers in science and math.

Kvitek initially had the idea to host a convention like this for young girls after her mom had told her that the company she works at— Hamilton— had coordinated something similar for the Girl Scouts of San Diego. Her mother envisioned something similar for the Girl Scouts of Carlsbad, but Kvitek saw something bigger. “I mentioned that I wasn’t a girl scout growing up and other girls might be interested in it, besides girl scouts. So I wanted to open it up to all the schools in my community and impact as many girls as possible,” Kvitek commented.

Seeing the value of impacting young girls, Kvitek buckled down during the summer of 2017 to try to create an event that met her goals.

She first wanted 20 companies and about 150 girls to attend her event, but over the summer she realized that the amount of companies and people she wanted would be overwhelming and unrealistic. As a result, Kvitek claimed that she “lowered [her] expectations to about 10 and ended up with 11 [companies], which worked well” and ended up “with about 100 girls, about six girls in each group.” Kvitek saw six as a good number because  “each girl is getting the perfect amount of attention from the professional.” The companies featured had interactive activities with the girls, demonstrating virtual reality in medicine, designing aerospace technology and examining animal behavior.

Giselle K., a 7th grader from Valley Middle School attended this convention after being handed a flyer from her science teacher. Giselle commented on the booths, saying “There was a lot of cool things that I had never seen before.” She was particularly interested in animal behavior, and Emily’s conference was a great opportunity for her to learn more about her passions.

Kvitek experienced hiccups in her journey to the convention, including finding funding for her event. She was lucky enough to have her event sponsored by Thermo Fisher, a well-known biotechnology development company with locations all around the world. A volunteer for Thermo Fisher, Sonia, was able to give some background as to why Thermo Fisher wanted to help her, saying “Thermo Fisher loves to sponsor STEM events, and any way to do that is great, and when we heard about this we were excited to get more young people involved.” With the continued support of the STEM companies around her, Kvitek was able to reach many kids.

Many teachers also attended the event in support as well as volunteered to check in kids and to hand out t-shirts and goodie bags. Mrs. Park, the biomedical sciences teacher and PLTW department chair also commented about Kvitek’s convention and said, “I can’t think of another forum where we have had girls coming together and talking about science in our community.” As a female science teacher, Mrs. Park also noted how excited she is for young girls in STEM, saying “I am so excited, just seeing the girls putting on the lab coats and being interested in the experiments that they’re doing is just so exciting.”

As Kvitek finished her Genius Project well before the May 2018 due date, she can now reflect on her journey and experience, “It feels incredible, honestly, now that I’m done I can focus on my school work.” She also had some things to say about the Genius Project itself, she noted “I definitely think the Genius Project is genius. It has taught me so many professional skills. I have learned so much from it and I’ve gained so much inspiration from it.”