ALMA MATTERS


Through the cuSTEMized web- site, young girls can create a free personalized sto- rybook where they place themselves in various jobs in the fields of sci- ence, technology, engineering, and mathematics.


ALUMNI IN ACTION


Dreaming big An innovative effort to close the gender gap in science and technology is helping young girls envision a broader range of career options • BY LAUREN KRAUSE (BA ’10)


Many young girls have big dreams about their future. They envision themselves as business leaders, law- yers, and teachers—but as scientists and engineers? Not so much. According to the Economics &


Statistics Administration in the U.S. Department of Commerce, women fill close to half of all jobs in the United States, but they hold less than 25 percent of the jobs in math and


36 LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO


science-related industries. When Loyola alum Kamil Slowikowski (BS ’11) first learned about this lack of diversity in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math- ematics) fields, he knew he had to do something to shift the balance. So Slowikowski, who majored


in bioinformatics at Loyola, joined cuSTEMized, a nonprofit initia- tive that provides personalized


storybooks, posters, and other products encouraging young girls to consider STEM careers. The initiative is the brainchild of Jean Fan, who like Slowikowski is a PhD candidate in the bioinformatics and integrative genomics program at Harvard. “I have to admit, as a man I wasn’t


aware of this issue. It was really after I stated talking to Jean that I learned it’s a real problem,” Slowikowski says.


That became even clearer when the pair started teaching a class on the programming language Python for middle school students last fall. Though the course was intended specifically for girls, only one female student signed up. “This helped me realize that the cultural bias runs deep,” he says. As part of the cuSTEMized team, Slowikowski is helping to change the


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