Future Leader Winner Is Already Drawing More Girls Into STEM
CASTLE ROCK, Colo. (CBS4) – Every month during the school year, CBS4 and PDC Energy honor a high school student who excels in science, technology, engineering or math, STEM. The Future Leaders winner gets $1,000 and a profile on a CBS4 newscast.
This month's winner is Sophie Reynolds. She's a rising senior at Castle View High School and she's already become a leader in the recruitment of more girls into biotech.
"I hope that I can inspire more females in the STEM field, specifically biotech," Reynolds said.
Reynolds is achieving that goal through a website she built called Exploring Biotech.
"I never built a website before, but I had a lot of fun with it," she explained.
Reynolds built the website as part of her Gold Award, the Girl Scouts highest achievement and a community service project.
"I was nervous, at first, to try because I didn't know what I was going to do or if I could even complete my Gold Award, but I'm very glad I did it," she said.
Reynolds developed a patch packet, full of activities that scouts can do to earn the biotech patch that she helped design.
"One of them I thought was very fun is called Biotech Bingo. So the girls have to go around their home looking for items that have either been produced with biotechnology or have been assisted with biotechnology," Reynolds explained.
"I love your patch. It is so, so beautiful. You did such a good job," said CBS4 Chief Meteorologist Lauren Whitney during the interview.
In addition to the website and the patch packet, Reynolds developed workshops geared toward four different grade levels. She consulted with teachers to come up with assignments that would inspire young minds.
"One of the activities is a genetic science ethics activity, which is basically an ethics question, like would you clone your dog if it died?" she explained.
"This is so fabulous that you've done all of this," Whitney told her.
"I just wanted to help other girls know it's not scary to join biotech," she said.