Emily Kvitek is beginning her senior year at Sage Creek High School in a big way. She moved to San Diego from Chicago in 2010 and has since been fully committed to her schoolwork while adjusting to living in a new place. Her focus at Sage Creek for the last 4 years has been BioMed, she is a National Honors Society student, is the president of Rotary Interact, and is a player on the Girls Varsity Soccer Team. She has aspirations to gain a premedical degree in college, and to then go onto Medical school, where she hopes to get her doctorate and become a Physiatrist or Cardiologist. Emily informed us that a physiatrist is a doctor who specializes in rehabilitating patients who have survived a traumatic accident, and have extensive damage to their brain, spinal cord, etc. and working to heal these patients is her dream profession.
At Sage Creek High School, all students are introduced to the "Genius Project" during their junior year of high school in their English class. The project is completely individualized, and students are encouraged to have their project bestow their passions, be challenging, and be of impact to the community. For Emily’s Genius project, she chose to fully plan and coordinate a STEM convention that would impact young girls in her community. “Knowing that only 24% of the STEM workforce is women, more young women need to be aware of the potential that exists in these careers, and this awareness starts with education at a young age,” Emily mentioned. With this, she set out to make her vision a reality, and has since been sending emails to various companies in and around San Diego to gain their participation in her convention.
The event, "The Future STEMs From Us" is on September 16th,2017 and is geared toward 5th-8th grade girls, but she welcomes any student who would like to be motivated to follow their passions in STEM. It is free to attend the event, and is completely non-profit. Students can sign up and read more about her event and passions at www.thefuturestemsfromus.weebly.com
The event will exhibit companies in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics/ Medicine fields. When Emily was generating the idea she says, “it was a priority to include a variety of companies in different fields, so that each girl who attends is able to be inspired by what she is interested in.” She has handpicked female STEM classmates of hers, who will volunteer at the event and will each lead a group of girls from company to company. Emily shared that she feels she owes this project completely to the English Department at Sage Creek High School, specifically Mrs.Alberts and Mrs.Myers, who generated the "Genius Project" and have pushed her and all her classmates to incorporate their passions into a challenging, but wonderful project. Emily deeply believes that her parents have also been an amazing part of her project and are always offering wonderful ideas and motivation to carry through with her vision.
She can't wait to see how her convention comes together beautifully and truly hopes each attendee “enters with a sparking curiosity, and leaves with a burning passion.”
