A blog post written by Kayla Ninh, EE’16, was featured in THE BRIDGE, the magazine of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-Eta Kappa Nu (IEEE-HKN). Ninh shares her experiences with the Peace Corps, a U.S. government volunteer program that provides social and economic development abroad while promoting mutual understanding. She was stationed in Lesotho, Africa, a landlocked country surrounded by South Africa.
In the post, Ninh speculates that promoting STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) education could help bring a country out of poverty.
Ninh also discusses the challenges students in Lesotho face, including hours-long walks to school, a lack of resources and daunting weather conditions. Educators must face the perception that STEAM subjects are difficult and that there is a lack of proper supplies for the classes, she says.
“IEEE-HKN was founded on a commitment to service, a value that I tried to instill in others during my time with the university’s Gamma Theta chapter and a value that I still remind myself of every day,” says Ninh, who was president of the IEEE-HKN student chapter at S&T. “My experience of service with IEEE-HKN and STEAM disciplines at Missouri S&T drove me to turn words of problems into actions of solutions.”