2023 Women* In STEM Leadership Conference

One year ago, I was a bright-eyed first-year university student who was happy just to get involved in the things around me. In 2022, I attended the Women* In STEM Leadership Conference. The main aim of this conference is to inspire, empower and educate female, femme-aligned and non-binary undergraduate students at the ANU about leadership in STEM.

In 2023, I returned to the conference as Education Coordinator and organised an Orienteering Challenge and an Opportunities workshop. The Orienteering Challenge was meant to acquaint new students with the Science Precinct on campus, and later-year students to find places and things that they had not seen before. This activity also created opportunities for early-year and later-year students to collaborate and solve a set of puzzles. It was intended to be light-hearted and fun, and it was great to see all teams running around enthusiastically trying to find clues and taking photos together. 

I had a lot of fun as well while designing the puzzles. Reaching the final set of puzzle questions was quite the journey, there were several puzzle drafts and test runs before the final iteration. It has been raining in Canberra recently, and I was sincerely hoping that it wouldn't rain on that day. Thankfully, the weather was in our favour!

Setting up the final orienteering clue, ft. coffee tray and sticky notes

The Opportunities Workshop was a more formal, lecture-style event. We had presenters from many university departments like Global Programs, Science Internships and Engineering Work Experience that presented to students various STEM opportunities to apply for. To create some diversity in the presentations, we also had an industry panel in which we invited students to share their experience working in the STEM industry both on and off-campus across different industries: government and non-government. We also had a Research Opportunities workshop, which was more conversational. 

I could see students writing down the opportunities in their notebooks - was so great to see this event had created value! At the same time, we did go overtime and our participants were mostly spoken to, so I was thinking that the Workshop could be more interactive next time.

I loved the freedom and flexibility I had throughout my role. At the same time, I knew that I could seek help whenever I needed it. My experience as a team member of the Organising Committee has been invaluable.

My key takeaway from this conference was realising that in addition to doing women* in STEM events like this, it is also just as important to evaluate the efficacy of such events. The keynote speaker, Anna-Maria Arabia spoke on how just 2 out of 300+ empowerment programs made an actual impact. This is due to a variety of reasons, and not necessarily due to the design of events, but it is hard to overlook such a staggeringly low number - less than 1% of the total programs!

Keynote address - Anna-Maria Arabia, Chief Executive of the Australian Academy of Science

Other speakers' experiences also reflected on this outcome - a panellist was the only woman in her Finance class a couple decades ago. When she asked conference participants if they have had similar experiences in their STEM class, more than half of us raised our hands. 

Someone also told me that women's representation in the STEM field has not really changed much since three decades ago. 

There is so much to discuss and work on in this area, all I have done in this blog post is share and reflect on what I heard, but there is so much more happening, and that would be a blog for another day. I would also say that despite these numbers, we should be optimistic and real about what the future holds for us.

I also found the academic mentoring session with Dr Penny Kyburz highly valuable. It was a 1-1 mentoring session, accompanied by afternoon tea. The mentoring session was meant to be an hour long and there was no expectation to continue the mentor-mentee relationship outside of the conference. It was fascinating to realise how real I could get with someone in less than an hour. I attribute this to my mentor being very transparent and real with me. She empathised with me, which let me share my thoughts and experiences with her. I also see her as a role model for who she is, and what she has achieved.

There was also an amazing dinner, which was FANTASTIC. I like food and chats, and I absolutely loved this. :))

Closing Night; Student Networking Dinner

It's amazing to see how much I have grown in just one year. A year later, I see my role as an individual and a person in STEM; and my purpose and stake in important causes like gender equity in STEM, science communication and embracing the multidisciplinary nature of this field. 

What's next for me? I will join the Australian Crisis Simulation Summit's wider team as Development Officer. I look forward to exploring the growing role of technology in the policy, security and international relations sphere.

Organising Team

Note: If any of the stats or data points above are incorrect, please let me know. Sometimes I am mistaken about the data.