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This story aired in the August 21, 2025 episode of Crosscurrents.
The acronym STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. And a recent study showed that 64 percent of the STEM workforce is still white. For many BIPOC students, the fields of STEM can seem out of reach.
A program at one San Francisco museum aims to help young people from all backgrounds see themselves as potential scientists.
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Story Transcript:
REPORTER: The California Academy Sciences in San Francisco contains multiple worlds. And on certain days, high school students are there to guide you through them.
There are students in the indoor rainforest, showing you the feathers of a tropical bird as hundreds of butterflies flutter by.
INTERN: At this station we are, um, telling, um, visitors about macaws and the structural color that they have and how they use it to camouflage.
REPORTER: Standing on a bridge overlooking a pool of patterned fish and tide pool creatures, there are students teaching you about stingrays.
INTERN: I think it’s really rare to get stuck by one.
REPORTER: And on the main floor, there’s another set of students standing in front of a taxidermed bear.
CAL ACADEMY INTERN, BRIANNA SMITH: This is also a bear claw, by the way, if you see, this is a grizzly bear claw.
REPORTER: Student Brianna Smith holds a grizzly bear claw with its long nails stretching to the end of the case it’s in.
BRIANNA: Um, they didn’t become our state animal until 1953 though.
REPORTER: Like all of these students, Brianna is an intern for the Cal Academy’s Careers in Science program, also known as CiS.
BRIANNA: A former classmate of mine actually did the program. She was another black girl. She was like, “You’re interested in STEM, you should do this program.” And she helped me sign up in sophomore year.
REPORTER: Careers in Science is a program for San Francisco High school students who are under-represented in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM. It’s a diverse group of students; some are first generation Americans, some didn’t grow up speaking English.
The Academy employs them year round from the beginning of high school until they graduate. They come every day after school to take classes in things like wildlife, geology, and DNA sequencing that they then teach to visitors at the museum.
EDUCATION PROGRAM COORDINATOR, VICKY HUANG: when you are a youth and you don’t see people who look like you or come from the same background as you working in STEM, you don’t even think that that might be a possibility for you as a career.
REPORTER: Vicky Huang is the Education Program Coordinator for CiS.
VICKY: And so having that exposure and being like, “Well, a scientist can come in many different backgrounds so they can look in many different ways.”
REPORTER: The Department of Education found people of color are less likely to be offered advanced science classes in high school. So they’re less likely to pursue those majors in college or even think of them as potential options for themselves. Vicky was able to intern at a museum when she was in high school, but it wasn’t this one.
VICKY: Even growing up I was like, “Oh, I don’t think I belong in STEM.” Right? And now here I am at a museum and I just led DNA bar coding with a bunch of youth, and sometimes it’s a topic I don’t even know anything about. That in itself is still being a scientist, right?
REPORTER: Vicky says, interns teach visitors in the museum, but they also learn important skills to use when they become adults.
VICKY: This is also a workforce development program beyond being STEM. So I teach the interns resume and cover letter workshops. We learn about LinkedIn, we learn about financial literacy. All this stuff is really important for them just as adults in the world.
REPORTER: Across the country DEI programs are being threatened, at museums and beyond. But the funding is secure for Careers in Science. It’s supported by the city through the Department of Children, Youth and Their Families.
Vicky says museum programs that focus on increasing diversity in under-represented fields are more important than ever. Plus, museums give young people a hands-on learning experience in ways that schools often don’t provide.
DR. ESTEFENIA PHEIN-GONZALES: We unfortunately do too much standardized education, memorizing things that are going to be tested, right?
REPORTER: This is Dr. Estefenia Phien-Gonzlazez, the Chief of Education and Learning at the Academy.
ESTEFENIA: And there’s little opportunities for them to see information, scientific information, social justice information, but translated in actual projects, careers, um, in things that are tangible.
REPORTER: She says museums play a vital role in transforming communities on a small scale – like their purchasing choices – to bigger ones, like how they can take action to stop the climate crisis.
She says without museums, youth lose opportunities to become the next innovators, and we all would lose knowledge on how to take care of the world we live in.
REPORTER: What would a world without museums look like?
ESTEFENIA: It’s a doom world. So an ignorant world is a doom world and museums play a fundamental role in maintaining the [educated] population, but also wondering “Why? Why is that being done and what’s missing and where’s my place in that action or lack of action?”
BRIANNA: The last spotting of a California grizzly bear in real, in the wild was actually in 1924. And after that they were declared extinct.
REPORTER: Back at Brianna Smith’s station, she is teaching visitors about Monarch, the last grizzly bear.
BRIANNA: Monarch’s story can be kind of, you know, gloomy, but it’s an important story to hear.
REPORTER: She says it’s really meaningful for her to be out here on the floor educating people.
BRIANNA: I feel like there’s a barrier when it comes to science and youth and allowing us youth to interact with the public and show other youth that it is possible. You can be in a career like this. It’s really important for expanding the field for everybody.
REPORTER: Brianna says even though it’s important that the people who practice STEM are diverse, its more about expanding the experiences for everyone involved.
BRIANNA: I think one thing we forget about diversity is it’s not just a diversity of color. It’s a diversity of knowledge, of history, of different people coming together and communicating.
REPORTER: After a long day of learning new facts about the world, Brianna says she takes it all home and teaches it to her family, pushing forward the gift of her new found knowledge.
You can learn more about the program here: https://www.calacademy.org/careers-in-science-cis-intern-program
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