Science Zone receives grant to create exhibit featuring women in STEM

CASPER, Wyo. (Wyoming News Now) - If we support a woman in STEM, then she can change the world. That is the driving idea behind the grant The Science Zone was awarded by the Association of Science and Technology Centers.

The grant will fund panels, graphics and other key components of the exhibit.

“The challenge is that a lot of textbooks and science museum exhibits you see a white male in a lab coat which is not exactly how all scientists look,” said The Science Zone Executive Director Steven Schnell.

The grant is supported by the If/Then Initiative and will cover the costs of creating an exhibit featuring women in STEM.

Within the exhibit there will be interactive components, including a career navigator that will match guests with a STEM professional based on their interests.

“The whole goal of it is to try to get anyone and everyone who walks through our doors who maybe didn’t previously have any affinity to science to think to themselves you know maybe I could be a geologist or a chemist or a biologist or an astronomer,” said Schnell.

The exhibit will be a permanent feature of The Science Zone, and they have plans to create banners that will be displayed on light poles around Casper. Large images will be displayed in the windows at the front of the science zone showing that professionals in STEM don’t all look the same, and that jobs in stem aren’t exclusively working in lab rooms.

Some elements of the exhibit are being designed with the ability to be moved around town to reach a wider audience. The destinations of the moving components have not yet been announced.

“It’s so cool to showcase the variety of STEM just doesn’t happen in a lab it happens in the world,” said Schnell.

As of right now the exhibit is not complete, but The Science Zone hopes it will be ready in the next few months.

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