Oakland Students Attend Easy Bay STEM Career Awareness Day

On Thursday, April 27th more than 300 students from high schools in Berkeley, Emeryville, Oakland, and Richmond descended on West Berkeley to participate in the 6th Annual East Bay STEM Career Awareness Day. Industry, academia, and local government have joined forces to inspire young people from under-served communities to pursue science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) majors at community and four-year colleges.

Each student visited two work sites in West Berkeley and more than 100 STEM professionals served as career mentors for the day. Tours at 15 companies provided participants with hands-on science and innovation activities – and the opportunity to imagine themselves in these exciting careers.

The East Bay STEM Career Awareness Day is designed to inspire high school students to pursue careers in STEM fields which boast strong job prospects and offer pay that is, on average, 26% more than non-STEM jobs.

Companies taking part included leading research enterprises like Bayer, Siemens, Aduro Biotech, Caribou Biosciences, Dynavax and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Businesses which combine art, technology and design are also participating: Avid Technologies, Fantasy Studios, Berkeley Mills and architecture firms Kava Massih, Noll & Tam, and WLC.

STEM Career Awareness Day springs from an original collaboration between Bayer and the City of Berkeley and has grown to include leadership from the Institute for STEM Education at CSU East Bay, Wareham Development, and the East Bay Economic Development Alliance. It is part of a larger regional effort to connect underserved youth with growing STEM workforce opportunities in the area.