This June, three undergraduate STEM majors from USC participated in our Summer Virtual Internship on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in STEM. During the four-week session, Mehak Bhatia, Luke Pierik, and Emma Silverstein carried out independent analyses of the literature on inclusion in STEM and proposed and completed creative projects in their areas of interest.
Mehak Bhatia is a student at USC pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Physics and Computer Science. During her internship, she studied the role of stereotypes in inhibiting the participation of underrepresented minorities in STEM. For her project, she created a website to collect and share useful resources that help promote diversity and representation in STEM.
Luke Pierik is a Senior at USC studying Physics and Applied Mathematics. He has been tutoring URMs in mathematics at a local elementary school through USC’s Joint Education Project for two years. Throughout the experience, he has become interested in the outsized impact education has on the social and economic wellbeing of URMs. He anticipates becoming a scientific researcher, while participating in local government to establish educational institutions serving the historically underrepresented. For his project, Luke analyzed best practices for inclusion in physics departments.
Emma Silverstein is a junior at USC majoring in Civil Engineering with a minor in Italian. She is an NCAA Division 1 athlete for the Women’s Rowing Team. She made the Dean’s List in Fall 2020. In 2021, she was named a CRCA scholar athlete. She currently lives in upstate New York. For her project, Emma explored methods for assessing the effectiveness of diversity curricula.
The Summer Virtual Internship was supported by funding from the NSF under Grant No. ECCS-1711268. The views expressed herein are solely those of the authors, and do not necessarily represent the views, opinions, or positions of USC or the NSF; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
