About the Authors

Hello! My name is Vanessa VanDeMark, and I am a senior Biomedical Engineering Major at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). I'm from Wilmington, Massachusetts, and have lived here my whole life! I am also a first-generation college student, my Dad being in the Coast Guard and my Mom being a chef, I am the first one to attend higher education. Currently, I am taking a Humanities Seminar called Intersectional Feminism. In this class, we were tasked to deep-dive into something we were passionate about and form an argument around it. The pipeline of women in STEM from early education to higher education is something that has always been important to me, so that is where I began.

Hello, My Name is Paul Pacheco, and I am also a senior at WPI majoring in Psychological and Cognitive Science with a concentration in psychobiology. I am also enrolled in WPI's Teacher Preparation Program to become a licensed high school biology teacher. Like Vanessa, I am also a first-generation college student. I was born and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts. My parents and grandparents came to the United States with the sole intent to improve the life of our future family and the generations to come. They taught me always to give back to where I came from. Without those roots ever being planted, I would have never bloomed. When I graduate from WPI, I plan on going back to the community that helped many other students like myself. I never imagined myself wanting to become a high school science teacher. I don't even think my parents envisioned me falling in love with this profession. Yet, here I am today, longing for the days where I get to have a classroom of my own one day.