As I write this, I am on the verge of many changes. At the end of 2012 I took the second of three exams I need to become an Illinois certified teacher in secondary science and finished my last semester of classes as an undergraduate physics student at IIT. Starting this month I am doing my student teaching at Benito Juarez Community Academy High School in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. As I come to the end of my undergraduate journey, the more I wonder about my choices in school and the influence they will have on my career opportunities. The decision to get my teaching certification as an undergrad was a difficult one to make.

What can I do with a degree in physics and an Illinois science certification for grades 6-12? Apparently a lot!

When I first started looking into the field of education, I was under the impression that my only option was to teach. Now I realize that teaching is just the beginning of a promising career in education. There is a vast need for people with an education background, especially in STEM. I have thought about using my training to develop curriculum for schools. I have noticed that many science teachers do not actually have a background in science, so I have considered doing professional development for teachers. This past summer I had the opportunity to work with the IIT Boeing Scholars Academy and the Chicago Zoological Society to develop ideas for nature education programs, and I loved it. Before that, I had never considered the educational component of museums, zoos, aquariums, and other places like these listed, which fall under the umbrella of “informal education.” And then, there are summer and year-round enrichment programs—like the IIT Boeing Scholars Academy—after school programs, science programs, math programs…all sorts of opportunities in STEM education, many unexpected!!

As an intern for the IIT Boeing Scholars Academy this past fall, I had the opportunity to do further research on career opportunities in STEM education, the very kind I wish I had known about in high school or even earlier in college. With Ross Ludwig, a fellow intern and summer 2012 Program Instructor, I helped plan an event to expose our Scholars to the vast opportunities available in STEM education. “Save the date” for Tuesday, April 2, 6pm, and watch the blog for more details later this spring!

Although I myself am not certain what my career path will look like, I know that whatever I do I will do with a passion for helping my community and  sharing my love for physics. The look on a student’s face when the light bulb begins to glow, the gratitude that I feel at the end of the day working with students, or the excitement I feel after writing a solid and fun lesson plan are all things that are irreplaceable.

 

Julia Gonzalez
Program Intern

I am proud yet humbled to announce that four IIT Boeing Scholars have been named as 2013 Posse Scholars!

The Posse Foundation is one of the most comprehensive and renowned college access and youth leadership development programs in the United States, which sends supportive, multicultural teams—”Posses”—of 10 students to Posse partner colleges and universities on four-year, full-tuition scholarships. In Chicago, only about 100 of the 2500 students who were nominated by local high schools and community-based organizations like ours were honored with an invitation to join the Posse family.

Of the IIT Boeing Scholars who were awarded the Posse Scholarship this year, Alexander Calatayud (Westinghouse College Prep) will attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison, RaSia Khepra (King College Prep) will attend Pomona College, and both Javier Weddington (Perspectives-Calumet Charter High School) and Juliana Perez (Von Steuben Metropolitan Science Center) will enroll at Trinity College in Connecticut. All four seniors have been involved with the IIT Boeing Scholars Academy since the summer after their sophomore year of high school. While we are sad, in one sense, to see them go, we are thrilled to send them on to such prestigious institutions, especially in the knowledge that they will be well-supported through their “Posses” and through the Posse program.

Congratulations to these and all of our seniors as you extend the IIT Boeing Scholars Academy family across institutions next fall and change the world wherever you go!

 

Marya Spont
Program Director

With the generous support of a kCura Geek Grant, last night the IIT Boeing Scholars Academy welcomed 100 students from more than 20 Chicago high schools to IIT’s campus to learn about majors and careers in technology innovation. There was great energy in the room as four amazing innovators—from diverse fields and at different stages in their careers—inspired attending students to reflect on who they are and what they, too, can do to create the future!

 

Thank you to everyone who came together to make last night’s event a huge success—our speakers, Andrew Sieja, Mae Cheri Whiteside, Christina Yang, and John Yerger; volunteers Liz Durkin, Sheena Enriquez, Andrés Lemus, and Tracy Thomas; and our event photographer (and Program Coordinator) Connie Ma; as well as the students, teachers, and community-based organizations who came out on a freezing January evening to attend! We hope to see many of you at future program events, such as Thursday’s information session for prospective applicants to the IIT Boeing Scholars Academy.

 

Marya Spont
Program Director

 

 

 

Happy New Year from the IIT Boeing Scholars Academy! As the new year kicks off, we are going into high gear preparing for one of our key career programming events of the spring. On Tuesday, February 12, we will host our second annual Job Shadow Day, a structured worksite experience which helps our students identify possible career interests by providing them with the opportunity to explore a range of professions, industries, and organizations. Last year’s event saw 37 Scholars explore their interests at 11 different sites!

Current Scholars: SAVE THE DATE, Tuesday, February 12 (Lincoln’s birthday). Most, if not all, schools are closed that day, but very few companies have that day off. If there are any specific Chicagoland organizations that you are especially interested in visiting, email us ASAP so that we can reach out to them. Keep your eye out for an email from us in late January, in which we will announce this year’s final job shadow hosts and sites.

Chicagoland professionals and organizations: Please consider volunteering 4 hours of your day (10am-2pm) on Tuesday, February 12, to host a Job Shadow Day at your worksite. This is an invaluable learning experience for our students to meet practicing engineers, scientists, architects, teachers, lawyers, and other professionals from various fields and industries (STEM is preferred but all are welcome!). For many students, it is their first glimpse of a professional workplace, and their first look at the day-to-day responsibilities and realities of a given profession or career, whether exciting (like traveling and making big decisions) or seemingly mundane (meetings, paperwork, etc.). Many of our students find their visit and your work incredibly inspirational, so this is a rewarding opportunity for you, too. Prospective Job Shadow Day HOSTS should submit our registration form by Wednesday, January 16. Additional details are available at the same link.

Please feel free to share the above invitation with any colleagues in your Chicago-area networks whom you think may enjoy serving as hosts on Job Shadow Day, and do not hesitate to contact me at yma24@iit.edu or 312.567.3005 with any questions. 

 

Connie Ma
Program Coordinator

This has been quite a busy fall for our Scholars! As many of our recent posts show, our seniors have been busy applying to college, and Leadership Grant Project groups are hard at work finalizing budgets and moving from planning stages to implementation. Concurrently, we have been running around town for enrichment programming, which this fall ran the gamut from humanities festival lectures on health care and technology to a day reading science fiction at a liberal arts college.

In November, Scholars attended several events associated with the renowned Chicago Humanities Festival, including “Captive Audience: The Future of Information in America,” with Susan Crawford, J.D., a leading thinker on the intersection of technology and democracy, and “The Ethics of American Healthcare”  with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a decorated bioethicist and a key figure in the national debate on health care.

Scholars also participated in an event at Shimer College, “The Future of Biomedical Engineering: The End of Species?” — created just for IIT Boeing Scholars! Scholars and their friends were invited to have lunch with college students and observe a typical Shimer seminar in practice. Then Scholars had the opportunity to engage in their own liberal arts demonstration class with Dr. Jim Donovan, a biophysicist by education, who guided students through a discussion of Ursula Le Guin’s short story “Porridge on Islac,” about what it means to be human and to what extent genetics can define our humanity.

Our thanks also go out to Dr. Stuart Patterson, Director of Admissions Elaine Vincent, and everyone else at Shimer who helped plan the day, made our students feel so welcome, and challenged them to think seriously about how the liberal arts can contribute to their education. We were delighted to work with you and appreciated your hospitality and warmth!

As a reminder, all Scholars are expected to attend at least three program events per semester. We look forward to seeing Scholars and friends alike in the winter and spring, during which time we’ll be focusing on career exploration!

 

Connie Ma
Program Coordinator

This past Saturday, approximately 40 IIT Boeing Scholars representing 14 different Leadership Grant Project groups participated in our LGP Project Management Workshop at the MTCC Ballroom. Professor Bob Anderson — faculty in IIT’s Stuart School of Business and the university’s Director of Technology Transfer and Intellectual Property — reprised his role from last year, delivering an insightful and hilarious PowerPoint presentation on project management that had us staff taking as many notes as the students did!

Professor Anderson talked about the common pitfalls of project management, including communication, conflict, and “scope creep,” and shared many stories from his personal and professional experiences. Then students worked on their budgets and project management plans together with their Project Mentors and several brave volunteers who jumped right in to help.

A reminder that all LGP groups’ budgets are due by email to Marya and me tomorrow, November 15. This budget should be as finalized as possible, allowing students to progress from the planning stage to the implementation stage. If you have any questions about your budget, please feel free to contact us!

Finally, a huge shout out to our Project Mentors, adult professionals and volunteers who have been devoting their time to working with our students! Regardless of whether you were able to join us on Saturday or the stage of your group’s project, thank you for your continued work supporting our students as they learn the valuable lesson of how challenging — yet how rewarding — it is to make real things happen in the real world. It is a most critical task and we hope you are proud of what you and our students have, together, done thus far. We are excited to see where things go!

 

Connie Ma
Program Coordinator

 

We are excited to announce that our IIT Boeing Scholars enjoyed fantastic successes at last week’s Chicago Scholars Onsite Admissions Forum — earning more than 50 college acceptances in just one day! We’re so proud of you!

Throughout the Onsite, we heard the words “I’m going to college!!!” again and again, as our 40 participating seniors were admitted to the following 25 universities:

Albion College, Bradley University, Case Western Reserve University, DePaul University, DePauw University , Dominican University, Eastern Illinois University, Grinnell College, Illinois Institute of Technology, Illinois State University, Knox College, Lake Forest College, Loyola University Chicago, Marquette University, Michigan State University, Monmouth College, North Park University, Ripon College, Roosevelt University, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, University of Dayton, University of Illinois-Chicago, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Western Illinois University.

Also as part of the Onsite, our seniors applied to and interviewed with 29 other colleges that weren’t offering “onsite” decisions but who were offering students the valuable opportunity to introduce and advocate for themselves face-to-face with admissions representatives. Colleges in this group included:

Amherst College, Augustana College, Boston College, Boston University, Carleton College, Carnegie Mellon University, Claremont McKenna College, Colgate University, Colorado College, Cornell University, Harvard University, Hobart and William Smith College, Hope College, Miami University-Ohio, Northwestern University, Olin College, Pitzer College, St. Olaf College, Syracuse University, University of Chicago, University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, University of Miami, University of Missouri, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California, Vanderbilt University, Villanova University, Wellesley College, and Williams College.

 

Scholars will hear back from these colleges, and any others to which they have applied outside of the Onsite, between December 2012 and March 2013. Several seniors have already earned admission to non-Onsite colleges, too!

 

Though exciting, the day was long, with Scholars arriving at 7:30am and with many not leaving until 6pm. What did they do when they weren’t interviewing?

 

 

Thank you to everyone at Chicago Scholars for putting together such a transformative event, and to Tanya Cabrera, Jerry Doyle, Sheena Enriquez, and Andres Lemus for taking time out of their busy schedules to help guide and encourage our students throughout the day!

And, of course, thank you to our inspiring and dedicated Scholars for all of their hard work over the last four years and especially the last four months — much of which time was spent in our office preparing for the Onsite. It is an honor and a pleasure to have the opportunity to work with each and every one of you, and we’re excited to see where you decide to enroll in the fall!

 

Marya Spont
Program Director

 

Growing up, I loved playing with Legos, which is something a good percentage of other architecture majors say in their college essay introductions. But I actually did love playing with Legos, and they led me to becoming an architecture student in an unusual way.

When I was about 6 years old, my father asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I told him a construction worker, since I like to build things with Legos, and construction workers build. He looked at me and told me, “No, you’ll be an architect, the one that designs what gets built,” and I said ok. After that day I knew my career path, and did not think about it until some years later.

It wasn’t until I was in high school that I had to think more seriously about what I wanted to study in college and what I wanted to have a career in again. However, as a CPS student, I was always filled with doubts about my future. Some teachers would say things like “None of you are going to college anyways,” and “Most of you are going to become gangbangers or get pregnant.” Nonetheless, when asked, I said I wanted to be an architect. I still knew very little about architecture. All I knew was that they were respected professionals and made good money.  At my high school, North Lawndale College Prepatory Charter High School, we received an opportunity to go to IIT and hear a lecture from Professor Robert Krawczyk. His lecture was on the spiral form of high rises that were geometries that are  rotated slightly each floor to make the spiral. He told us how he modeled these buildings, and explained the simple math he used as well. Being around all of the models and interesting designs made me even more interested in architecture. The lecture strengthened my desire to be an architect and made me even more excited for the future that awaited.

In my sophomore year, I transferred to Morton East High School which offered AutoCAD Computer Drafting classes. I enrolled and immediately told the teacher, Mr. Roach, that I wanted to be an architect and asked if he could help me apply to architecture schools. I only knew of one, IIT, and he added a few more to my list. I learned how to use AutoCAD and competed in competitions, and with Mr. Roach’s help, applied to and attended a summer program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for architecture. The program was two weeks long, and we were introduced to freehand drawing, drafting, model making, and designing space.

The program gave me added insight into what architecture was really about. When senior year came around, I applied to the architecture programs at the University of Urbana-Champaign and IIT. I weighed the advantages of each school against the disadvantages. U of I is a big college with a lot of social life as well as diversity of people, but it is far from Chicago and I wasn’t sure if I could focus on my studies there. I chose to attend IIT because of its prestige in the field of architecture and its closeness to home so I could focus on my studies. In my first two years, I was surprised to find out what architecture school actually consisted of. During the first year, we learned drafting, composition of drawings, model making, color juxtaposition, geometry, and the basics of architecture terminology and thought. During second year, we actually started designing buildings and learning about wall construction, building envelope, structure, and program. Even though I was lucky enough to get a taste of architecture during high school, it wasn’t enough to know exactly what architecture school demanded. I expected us to be using AutoCAD and computers all the time, and I didn’t expect architecture to be as abstract as it is. Even with the surprises, I luckily grew to love architecture. I am now a third-year student in architecture here at IIT, and I aspire to own my own architecture firm someday.

In order to help underserved students interested in architecture, I want students to have a means to discover architecture before they commit. I also want students to have mentors who can answer their questions or point them in the right direction, since not all of us are lucky to have a teacher like Mr. Roach. It’s important for students to have access to such individuals and opportunities. That is why I am working with the IIT Boeing Scholars Academy staff, and Arquitectos (an IIT College of Architecture student organization, with the goal of connecting the academic and professional world of architecture through the Latin context.) to design an event for the spring, where we will give high school students a look behind the curtain of architecture school for a day. They will get a tour of the facilities we use, the studios, participate in a short design activity, and get presentations by faculty and student organizations. We want to link them to the academic world of architecture even in high school, so that students will know what to expect in college, and do not have to rely only on preconceived notions and their love for Legos.

 

Aristeo Contreras
Program Intern