Alumni head toward STEM careers and encourage others to as well

   Two recent Holyoke High School graduates, Whitni Redman and Ella (Stewart) Tendick, are in the thick of their pursuits of careers in STEM fields, joining a number of women who are entering fields historically dominated by men.
    STEM refers to the academic disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and Redman and Tendick both fall into the science category.
    After graduating from HHS in 2012, Redman began the ongoing process of higher education. It started as a broad interest in science when she earned an Associate of Science degree from McCook Community College. She narrowed her scope when she continued at Peru State College, where she majored in biochemistry and received a Bachelor of Science degree.
    Now Redman is in her second year at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, where she is pursuing a Doctorate of Biomedical Sciences. After that, she plans to enter medical school. Her end goal is to become a college professor while running a research laboratory and being a practicing physician.
    Tendick, a 2011 graduate of HHS, attended Eureka College, where she was a double major in biology and chemistry. She currently works as a forensic scientist for Quest Diagnostics. As she explained it, she extracts drug analytes from positive drug test samples and then passes the extracted analyte on to the company’s gas chromatography mass spectrometry team to quantify it.
    In the future, Tendick plans to pursue a master’s degree in chemistry or a physician’s assistant degree. Speaking with both women made it clear that experience is key in directing their career choices. Tendick initially planned to become a physician’s assistant, but her work at Quest Diagnostics has made her consider a future lab career instead.
    “Having internships, or even volunteering, is so very important in any field because you can learn so much from a hands-on experience,” Tendick said.
    Likewise, Redman was prepared to apply to medical school to become a surgeon. Working in labs during her undergraduate studies, as well as completing summer research in North Dakota, made her realize how much she enjoyed research.
    One science teacher at HHS, Ashley Clayton, echoed the importance of experience. By the time students enter her eighth-grade class, she said, many have made up their mind about whether they like math and science.
    “If they have exciting and engaging early experience where they can see how integral math and science are to the world around them, it tends to drive their curiosity,” she elaborated, “but when they see math and science as a set of facts that they must memorize and then move on from, it is hard to get them out of that rut.”
 

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