A
s a mother of a pre-teen girl, Irma Velasco worried about her daughter’s struggle with science and how she would ever keep her motivated through middle and high school to keep her eye on the prize—college someday. “She didn’t like science,” Velasco said. “It was like drudgery.”
But then Velasco, who works at the office of the chancellor at UC San Diego, heard how the Sally Ride Science Junior Academy was coming to the campus. 
Launched in 2015, the Sally Ride Junior Science Academy is for girls in sixth-12th grade. It offers hands-on summer workshops that take STEAM classes to the next level of creative fun and critical thinking. Velasco had to wait until 2016 when her daughter was old enough—but then registered her for several workshops. 
“My favorite class was Deep Sea Treasure Box,” said Sofia Velasco, now 13. “And I loved the study of earthquakes and how they form and when they happen.” 
There was a definite difference from school science classes, Sofia said. All her teachers were female. She liked the individual attention, the many hands-on activities and the exciting variety of topics. “We learned about oceans, earthquakes and space. We wrote about electricity and currents and sea creatures and mysteries of the sea. We got to practice with virtual reality.”
Now Sofia wants to study oceanography. “Science was scary,” she said. “Now it’s a new way of viewing the world.”

The Transformational Power Of The Sally Ride Science Junior Academy
“It’s not enough to get to college,” said Dr. Edward Abeyta, associate dean for Community Engagement & director Pre Collegiate and Career Preparation Programs. “It’s about engaging students earlier. You can be a better global citizen of our community when you see the possibilities you didn’t know were there before.”
According to a Sally Ride Science video, “Seventy percent of fourth graders say they love math and science, but by the time they reach eighth grade, almost half the students lose interest. The goal is to link classroom learning to real life careers and give them classroom tools to keep them engaged.” 
To add to the disconnect, middle and high school girls don’t have enough female role models. When they see them, however, it can be transformational, he said. “Minds are not sexist. Brains are freed to explore and expand. Here, it helps girls envision themselves in the sciences.”
The Sally Ride Science Junior Academy breaks stereotypes about limitations because it showcases mostly women instructors with STEM careers who make it look cool, Abeyta explained. They teach with an “if we can do it, you can do it” mentality. They are experts in their STEAM fields or grad students with diverse backgrounds who want to give back to their communities and to the next generation. 
From the participant perspective, they see science in motion and career options, too—an ocean engineer, computer scientist, space explorer, earthquake geologist, a video game programmer and more.   
Sofia said, “If you look up to someone, you can imagine yourself doing whatever you want to do. You’re worth something. You can never give up.” 
Sally Ride Science Junior Academy—under the Sally Ride Science umbrella—is part of UC San Diego’s five Pre-College Programs. Designed “to help participants to ignite a passion for life-long learning, explore academic interests and prepare for the demands of college,” Sally Ride Science falls under the STEAM pipeline. Implemented through the University’s Extension, Supercomputer Center and Scripps Institution of Oceanography, it focuses on professional development for teachers, K-12 STEAM education and online programming via UCTV’s STEAM Channel, which already has had more than two million views. 
The Sally Ride Science Junior Academy builds intrigue, curiosity and fun in its hands-on learning experiences of different scientific fields. The variety of summer 2018 workshops includes: The Music of Earthquakes; The Science of Science Fiction; Space Out; Slimy Sea Creatures; Google Circuit Boards; Virtual Reality; Deep Sea Exploration; An Introduction to Robotics; Ethically Hacking Toys; Culinary Chemistry: Fun with Flavors; Intro to Videogame Programming; Arctic Mammals: Biology, Culture & Art; and Art of Anatomy.

The Inspiration Behind the Program
Sally Ride, at 32, was the first American woman in space and the youngest. While finishing her Ph.D. in physics at Stanford in 1977, she saw an article saying NASA was looking for astronauts. She applied and was one of the first six women chosen to the astronaut corps. She was in the first Challenger space launch in 1983 and again 1984. Upon retiring from NASA, Ride joined the faculty at UC San Diego, wrote books on science topics for kids and also started Sally Ride Science, a company she co-founded in 2001 to inspire students to pursue careers in STEM. 
In 2015, UC San Diego took over the company and expanded the STEM mission to a year-round community outreach that worked with schools, libraries, nonprofits and community partnerships to reach girls and underrepresented youth. UC San Diego is an HSI, and a quarter of the students are first-generation Hispanic, Abeyta said. With San Diego being a diverse community of many ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds, the goal is to mirror the community at large. 
The Legacy Lives On
For Irma Velasco, The Sally Ride Science Junior Academy was a game changer. It gave Sofia confidence and a stronger sense of self as a Latina and as a girl with vision who now wants to pursue science.  “I tell her if she wants to get into UCSD, we need As and Bs, but she’s motivated now.” 
They will be registering again this year. “So many doors have opened after just one summer. I want my daughter to go back every year and take as many sessions as she can until she graduates.”
Getting girls excited about science and changing their perspective in relation to it was what Sally Ride was all about. Ride died of pancreatic cancer in 2012. Inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame and the Astronaut Hall of Fame, she also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013 from President Barack Obama.  The magnitude of her legacy—her love and fascination of science—lives on in girls like Sofia Velasco and the Sally Ride Science Junior Academy. 
“Sally Ride was an icon we could look up to,” Abeyta said. “Our teachers here inspire the next generation of Sally Rides, and we’ll break the ceiling together, whether in business, science or the arts. This swell will create a tsunami.” 
UC San Diego Sally Ride Science Junior Academy Summer Program 2018 runs from June 26 through July 21. For more information, visit: https://www.sallyridescience.com/junior-academy/ •