TX SWMS takes on UT STEM Girl Day

In February, TX SWMS participated in the annual UT STEM Girls Day hosted by UT Austin’s Women in STEM (WiSTEM) group. The event, hosted each year since 2002, aims to engage K-8 girls in hands on STEM activities with scientists from their communities to help increase the retention of girls in STEM fields. This year’s event was the largest yet with around 10,000 student participants and an additional 5,000 parents, teachers, and chaperones. Nearly a quarter of the student participants were members of a local Girl Scouts troop. The event included 161 companies, non-profits, & community partners leading hands on STEM activities for students throughout the day ranging from biology, engineering, chemistry, mathematics and more. Located around three hours from the nearest coast we thought this would be a great opportunity to connect with students and teachers in our community and spread the word about all the great marine research that happens across the state.

TX SWMS hosted a table at the event centered around what it is like to be a woman in marine science and career opportunities in marine science. In addition to providing information about SWMS and our lives as marine scientists we had activities centered around understanding the impacts of climate change on coral reef ecosystems. These activities included live corals and anemones, coral and urchin skeletons, and an ocean acidification experiment. One of the first questions we received from kids approaching the table was, “what can we touch?” and lucky for them, we had plenty of coral and urchin skeletons to go around. Students had the opportunity to feed the live corals and anemones and learn about these animals and how they get energy both from food and their photosynthetic symbionts. The corals we brought were facultatively symbiotic meaning they can survive with and without their photosynthetic symbiont at no cost to their fitness. We used this characteristic to explain what happens when corals in the tropics get stressed out and lose their symbionts and what that might mean to the survival of a coral reef. We also ran an ocean acidification experiment involving coral skeletons and vinegar. We placed a coral skeleton in vinegar the night before the event so that it would completely dissolve by the morning. We then added new coral skeletons to the vinegar throughout the day so students could observe the effect of acidification on these skeletons and the organisms that rely on them. The longer the coral skeleton sat in vinegar the more it dissolved, demonstrating that with the effects of climate change it will become harder for corals to build their skeletons which poses a threat to entire coral reef ecosystems. 

Over the course of the five hour event we interacted with countless elementary and middle school students and younger. We heard many inspirational stories from young girls planning to pursue careers in marine science and we hope to hear many more in the future. We’re already counting down the days until STEM Girl Day 2025!