A field (trip) guide for tomorrow's STEM leaders
Close your eyes and picture a scientist.
If your default image is someone resembling Albert Einstein or Bill Nye, you’re not alone. Since 1957, various “Draw a Scientist” experiments have consistently resulted in sketches of older Caucasian men in glasses, regardless of who is doing the drawing – children, adults, even scientists themselves.
When a group of high school students stepped off their school buses onto AbbVie’s campus on a gray February morning, they may have had this same scientist image in their heads. As part of a partnership involving North Chicago Community High School, the Illinois Science & Technology Institute and the AbbVie Foundation, the teens had been paired with employee mentors and challenged to come up with a new way to improve the lives of cancer patients.
They got off the bus expecting to percolate these ideas, take a quick tour of where their mentors worked and maybe eat some pizza.