Gonzalez 1

Jesus Gonzalez

Michael Mlekoday

UWP 1

12 June 2018

Effective STEM Communities

The most cultivating question which gets asked to the youth is, what do you want to be

when you grow up? For many years no answer felt like it was a good fit for me. This changed

when I entered high school. A school named Social Justice Humanitas Academy (SJHA) located

in the heart of the San Fernando Valley. While there, I joined a club known as the Young STEM

Students Club which is a discourse community. A discourse community is described by John

Swales as a community with broadly agreed goals, mechanisms of intercommunications and

providing information, and a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant

content. The Young STEM Students Club was founded by two teachers, Brenda Arias who

teaches Physics and AP Chemistry, and Cofley Moore who teaches AP Calculus AB and BC. It

was founded in 2011 after many students taking those classes complained about there not being a

place dedicated to math and science to study in after or before school. After years of funding and

more teachers joining the effort along with students, they were able to turn a storage room into a

STEM library and even hired a tutor to work in the room. As a discourse community, many

about intercommunication such as how do the teachers who have different disciplines

communicate with each other for the benefit of the students? Another question is how do they

promote the club to new students who don’t know what STEM is? Finally, how do these several

types of communications ultimately improve the amount of student interest in the STEM
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community? However, before the teachers can think about recruiting students, they must first

from a communication network among themselves.

In the six years since the club’s creation, the number of students from the school going

into college with a STEM major has steadily increased. The class of 2017 had the most students

join the Young STEM Club and subsequently had the most students declare a STEM major out

of all the graduating classes in the school’s history. The acceptance rate of students from that

high school into college also improved thanks to the rise in the average G.P.A of the school. The

last two years alone have seen a general G.P.A increase of 15%. The school’s G.P.A average is

measured every recorded term which is every five weeks, along with diagnostic exams. These

exams measure what the student has learned in the past five weeks in the four subjects; writing,

reading, math, and science. Along with an increase in G.P.A, recent diagnostic results indicate a

subtle increase in math and science scores. General interest has also increased because members

of the club have started other STEM based clubs like Robotics Club founded in 2014 and the

Aerodynamics Collective founded in 2015.

With so much success in preparing students for the rigorous nature of college, the two

founding members, Arias and Moore, thanked the current communication system used by the

teachers. Arias specifically said, “Much of the results have to do with the network that we, as

teachers, worked so hard to create and are constantly improving”. The way the current way that

the teachers communicate with in themselves is if someone, teacher or student, gets an idea or

has a piece of information they want to incorporate into the club then they send it to a group

email board which consist of the club administrators. From there, the founding administrators

decide whether to take the concept to a vote which includes all the members of the club. If it

doesn’t go to vote, then the idea is sent back to who ever sent it with the purpose of revision.
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Once the idea is revised and improved it is then sent back to the administrators who will allow it

to go to vote. The reasoning behind this is to encourage critical analysis and revision so that any

future ideas that the person might have, will go through the same double-checking process.

That method is for simple decisions like meeting times or meeting locations. More

complicated decisions go through a longer process. It starts with the idea itself, the two teachers

talked about the fundraising issue which had just happened last month. In which, the

administrators wanted to purchase more graphing calculators. This required the money to be

raised via fundraising. To decide the type of fundraiser, the teachers and the student separately

brainstormed then the chosen representatives from each group meet to further discuss the best

approach. This system resembles a hierarchy style in terms of passing and deciding information

which is commonly used in big businesses where the top of the hierarchy would be the CEO

(Montgomery 4). In this case it is one teacher from each branch of STEM. The benefits to this

system are apparent when analyzing the flow of information. As seen in the data charts provided

by the inventors of the Hierarchical Communication System, a simple device used by much of

today’s communication technology, data is compartmentalized and processed individually. Then

the processed data is sent back up to the “head” which then allows the rest of the device to use

(Mahany). The use of this communication system in modern technology is no accident as it

provides a very stable, organizational, and efficient transfer of information. Just like this

commonly used device, the Young STEM Students Club has benefited from a hierarchical

communication system and the results show, not only in the statistics of the club, but also in the

individual experiences gained by current and past members.

Some students who were in the club with me, are currently studying a STEM major at

UC Davis. When asked about their experience during their time as a Young STEM Student
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member, one Geotechnical Engineering major student responded with, “I don’t think I would be

in college if I wasn’t recruited into the club because I was not interested in any of the “common

career choices”, not until I heard about engineering.” Another student went on to say, “I learned

some really valuable skills because of that club, like how to properly study and network with

other students or how to take good notes. All of which I had no idea how to do”. Not everyone

had specific skills to name, the final student from UC Davis said, “I met a lot of new people in

the club and I still talk to them even though most of them go to different colleges all around the

country”. With experiences like these, the community must have an effective “recruitment”

system in place to have people join from various levels of interest in STEM.

Arias and Moore elaborated on how they get students to join the club, even those who

don’t think they are interested. “When we started, we told students who we knew were interested

first. Then we let them come up with ideas on how to get more people to join because we needed

a specific number of members to be considered an official club for funding purposes”, said

Moore. One example of the ideas that the so-called “founding students” came up with included

making a video showcasing the benefits and activities provided by the club, which would be

shown at the monthly school assembly and be posted on the school website along with social

media accounts. Another idea was to have science and technology experiments during before-

school, lunch, and after-school. The final initial method was described by Arias as “basic

advertising”. This included posters and flyers posted around the school, and announcements

through the loud speaker.

The teachers allowing the students to take care of advertising makes sense in terms of

reaching more people. According to a study found in the book, Advertising 2.0: Social Media

Marketing in a Web 2.0 World by Tracy L. Tuten, the largest age demographic for internet use is
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from the age range 18-29 at 83% of the demographic claiming daily internet use. With such a

significant percentage, students would have more knowledge and experience navigating social

media and other forms of internet advertising. Students also know what other students are

interested by, Arias stated that she did not even think about doing on-campus demonstrations

because she had been so used to demonstrations having studied Physics in university. The first

demonstration they showcased was the infamous “Elephant Toothpaste” experiment back in

2011. Since then demonstrations have become one of the most expected activities that the club

does, even by students who are not in the club.

Although student involvement in communication is important to the overall success of

the club because they are responsible for the image of the club, it is only one aspect of the

communication system. The ways that the members within a club communicate among

themselves is crucial in the ultimate success of that club. As showcased by the Young STEM

Students Club, feedback and teamwork along with active contribution all invoke the evolution of

discourse communities. Feedback and teamwork can take the form of critical analyzation and

revision along with questioning current tactics, to ultimately improve recruitment and STEM

interest. This is something that the Young STEM Students club has been getting better at, in

large thanks to how their communication system is structured.

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Works Cited

Arias, Brenda. Personal Interview, 19 May 2018

Mahany, Ronald L. “Hierarchical communication system providing intelligent data, program and

processing migration”. US20110007724A1, United States Patent and Trademark Office, 03

September 2013. Google Patents Full-Text and Image Database,

https://patents.google.com/patent/US8526329B2/en

Montgomery, Cynthia A. “Putting Leadership Back into Strategy.” Harvard Business Review,

January 2008,

info.psu.edu.sa/psu/fnm/asalleh/montgomeryputtingleadershipbackintostrategy.pdf Accessed 01

June 2018

Moore, Cofley. Personal Interview. 19 May 2018

Tuten, Tracy L. Advertising 2.0: Social Media Marketing in a Web 2.0 World. Westport, Praeger

Publishers, 2008