A successful Philadelphia science education program for young women is looking for a fresh start and a new home after years of being hosted at the Academy of Natural Sciences.
For more than 40 years, the academy ran the Women in Natural Sciences Program, or WINS, which mentored generations of budding female scientists. The after-school program accepted students at Philadelphia public or charter schools with financial need. Hundreds of participants have gone through the program. All of them went on to graduate high school, and the majority went to college.
It was so successful that in 2018, the White House and the National Science Foundation gave it a Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoringand there is ongoing research to study the lives of participants.
However, program organizers say that at the start of this year, the academy and Drexel University stopped hosting it because the university was worried that the Trump administration would see it as not compliant with Title IX, which bars discrimination based on sex from programs that receive federal funding. The institution later announced that it was closing its museumwhich permanently shut its doors in September.
After much negotiation, the WINS program spun off from the academy and Drexel and is now its own separate organization. This will not be the first time an initiative at the academy has spun off to become its own entity; the Please Touch Museum started as a pilot project at the academy in 1976. Although the WINS organizers hoped the academy and Drexel would have fought to keep the program, it will survive on its own, said Ninette Bennett, interim executive director.
“It sucked and it hurt that day that that decision was made, we all sat in a room and there were a lot of tears,” she said. “We felt like it was an opportunity for WINS to be able to fly and flourish and really spread its wings and not be subjected to the walls of the academy.”
‘I never felt like I’m out of place. I actually felt home’
The program started in 1982. Students go to workshops, activities and field trips that are designed to help them learn about science, become more self confident and learn communication skills. Bennett participated in the program in 1989, because her teacher thought she would enjoy it, as a student who liked science and enjoyed being outside.
“Being at the academy, at this place with these scientists who welcomed these girls from Philadelphia, I never felt like I’m out of place. I actually felt home,” she said.
She said she didn’t know about what happened inside water treatment plants, or which stars were in the sky, until she joined the program.
“When I learned those things, I was blown away,” she said. “It was just like this incredible, wonderful opportunity to just soak these things up and learn about my city and learn about how I fit in and learn about nature, like that I’m a blip on the map, but that I have power and purpose in this world.”
Several alumni partly credit the program with their academic success, like Mazzi Ingram.
“The only reason I passed environmental studies my ninth-grade year was because of the WINS program,” she said. “I didn’t need to go home and do my homework because every Wednesday I would be covering the same stuff in WINS and being able to do it live with a real scientist.”
The program started with ninth grade students, but later expanded to include the later years of high school as well. For older students, the program included college tours. Ingram was able to visit schools in New England during one of those tours, a place she had not been to before. She ended up graduating from Brandeis University, and now works on special projects for the Parks Department in Philadelphia. She has also created a program to introduce young people to climate-related and environmental jobs.
Aside from academic support, program alumni also credit it with a network of mentors that has helped them in different stages of life. Zakia Elliottwho started attending the program in 2007, called it a “second home.”
“I had a team that I could always talk to who understood that we’re all young women from Philadelphia who are trying to navigate our way through this world and figure out what our true path is,” she said.
She ended up going to Brown University and interned at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Elliott now directs a grassroots organization working on food justice and urban agriculture in Philadelphia.
There is an ongoing, federally funded research study to follow the lives of students who were part of the program, to find out what leads to success in science related careers, and if this program holds lessons for other after school youth programs.
The WINS program was also a financial asset to the academy, because various grants paid for it, according to Betsy Payne, who managed the program for 11 years and oversaw the budget.
Additionally, participants would volunteer and work for the academy as part of their experience, and the grants paid for that too.
Future of the program after the academy
Despite the successes of the program, this February, the academy announced it would pause the nomination process for this year’s cohort to “comply with recent federal directives,” according to a spokesperson for Drexel University.
An academy spokesperson declined to comment, but told The Philadelphia Inquirer that the separation was done “at Drexel’s insistence.”
Ninette Bennett, the interim director, recalled telling academy leadership that, “it feels like someone is erasing my childhood and my history.”
“Being a Drexel grad, I was angry. I was like, ‘Fight for us,’” she said.
Now, organizers are trying to carve out a new path for the program. As part of the transition process this year, the program will miss out on a class of students, which upset Bennett.
“It is criminal to me that 25 young ladies won’t have this … same life-changing opportunity,” she said.
The program will take nominations for a new cohort next January.
The Philadelphia Education Fund is now the program’s fiscal sponsor. But challenges remain: the program now has to assume all kinds of costs for services that were previously provided by the academy — a website, their own information technology department and other infrastructure.
Bennett said the WINS program is looking for a new permanent space, but in the meantime, program managers work from home, and the Fairmount Waterworks offered them space for programs.
However, she said that even though the program will change, she and other organizers and alumni are determined to keep it going.
“Everybody’s like, ‘Oh, it’s the best kept secret in Philadelphia.’ We shouldn’t hang our hat on it being the best kept secret. It shouldn’t be a secret. Everybody should know how phenomenal this program is and the outcomes and and like the girls who are in it and what we’re doing and what we have done” Bennett said.
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Source: www.wesanews.org
