All Girls STEM Society hosts online Math Bonanza on May 3

The All Girls STEM Society is hosting an All Girls Math Bonanza on Zoom on Sunday, May 3 from 2 p.m.-4:30 p.m. Girls in grades 3-8 will get the chance to tackle challenging problems in a supportive environment and participate in some friendly team competitions. Girls will be divided into groups by grade level to participate in problem-solving, puzzles, relay races and math games.

Veronica Tang, a 2018 Bishop’s School graduate, co-founded the society in 2015 to provide more opportunities for girls in STEM (science, engineering, technology and math), also founding the first-ever all-girls math tournament in San Diego. Tang is now a student at Harvard University but The All Girls STEM Society continues on, with a board of directors made up of student leaders from all over the county.

“We’re trying to expand to get girls from more schools to go to All Girls STEM events and online workshops,” said Mira Gowda, a Rancho Santa Fe resident and the All Girls STEM director of fundraising and outreach. Due to current circumstances regarding COVID-19, the society has taken all activities online with Zoom. ”It’s something to do while we’re all at home and it’s not a super high commitment.”

Mira, a sophomore at Bishop’s, first got interested in STEM when she participated in an all-girls robotics team in sixth grade. Since then, she has enjoyed other areas of STEM such as coding, programming, biology and chemistry.

Typically, the society would host monthly workshops at local libraries on a variety of topics with activities and a guest speaker who is a woman in the STEM field. Since the stay-at-home order they moved to Zoom gatherings and held an April online workshop on probability. For May, their big event will be the Math Bonanza.

All of the society’s teachers are high school student volunteers, who develop the curriculum on their own. The one workshop that Mira led was actually outside of her area of expertise, on logic, and that’s what she said she likes best about the group: “I can explore new things and learn more about them.”

The All Girls Math Bonanza will be limited to 80 participants. Register at allgirlsstemsociety.org