When the late Sally Ride launched into space in the summer of 1983, she blazed a trail for women astronauts, including Christina Koch, the first woman to orbit the moon days ago and who is set to splash down with her Artemis II crew members late Friday afternoon off the coast of San Diego.
And when Ride retired from NASA and began teaching physics at UC San Diego, she knew she wanted to help close the gender gap in science and engineering.
“Students will tell you that science and engineering are important, science, technology, engineering are important,” Ride said in 2011. “But they’ll say it’s important, but it’s not important for me.”
Ride said one major way to spark interest was that students needed “to see a diverse group of scientists that, by the way, look to them like normal people … so that they can start humanizing these careers.”
In 2001, she launched Sally Ride Science with her life partner, Tam O’Shaughnessy, and colleagues to help young girls realize these subjects could be important for them.
Fourteen years after Ride’s death, the organization continues her mission and is expanding from a summer camp to a yearlong program with UCSD.
“Students are the future,” said Maysoon Lehmeidi, who oversees Sally Ride Science programming. “That was one of her goals, was really to inspire more young women, especially underrepresented women, to not be afraid of STEM, not be afraid of math and physics, and really take on that challenge and be a part of the solution for the future.”
Women made up eight percent of STEM workers in 1970, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Today, they make up nearly 30 percent.
Sally Ride Science is working to prepare more children, especially young girls, for jobs in STEM, Lehmeidi said.
“Students can't be what they can't see,” she said. “So the more we expose students to the different types of careers through the people who are actually teaching the classes, then the more they'll be able to see themselves in those shoes one day.”
The program has served thousands of students, from San Diego County and Southern California, mostly from fourth through ninth grade. One major change is that programming, taught by local grade school teachers, scientists and engineers, now serves students from kindergarten to high school. Students are taught everything from robotics to marine biology. Some classes are also taught in Spanish.
Lehmeidi said Sally Ride Science is partnering with the San Diego County Office of Education to provide training opportunities for teachers this summer, “and hopefully to give them additional skills on how to make science more accessible to their students in the classroom.”
Alegra Calderon, 17, who lives in Redlands, attended the Sally Ride camp twice as an elementary school student. Her godfather, who worked at the UCSD, encouraged her to attend, she said.
“Science had always been interesting to me, but I was never too educated on it until visiting the camp,” she said. “Once I, like, started getting into it, I realized that it was something that I really enjoyed.”
As the world watches the Artemis II crew make history with their 10-day lunar flyby, Calderon said she’s been thinking about her time at the camp.
“It was really like empowering to like, be around other groups where it was like all girls and like, this is like where you wanted to be,” she said.
Calderon is off to college soon, where she will major in business. But she’ll find her way back to science, she said.
“I think that everyone should know that science is for everyone,” she said.
