Shine On! draws about 6,500 students for annual conference
May 7—BEEKMANTOWN — About 6,500 students across New York tuned into Shine On!'s conference this year, a first for the SUNY Plattsburgh student-run organization that switched gears for its annual conference by allowing classrooms to participate virtually.
The conference, Look to the Stars: #CharacterCountdown, was hosted in the Beekmantown Middle School, where students were able to watch a downlink, a live feed of two astronauts — Megan McArthur from NASA and Thomas Pasquet from the European Space Agency — inside the International Space Station while they answered pre-recorded student questions.
SPACE ADVICE
Students' questions ranged from procedures and precautions in the station to questions about building confidence, leadership skills, how to bounce back from getting discouraged and breaking from gender norms.
Hailey Tripi, a Beekmantown eighth grader, asked McArthur about what advice she would give girls interested in space exploration and about the kind of persistence it took to become an astronaut.
McArthur said she was thinking about becoming an engineer and astronaut sometime around Tripi's age.
"And I think what helped me the most is that nobody told me it was a thing that girls didn't do," McArthur said.
"So I just went ahead and pursued that goal, of course studying math and science in school and looking at what the career required from someone. It was just never being discouraged by anyone in my support group that really helped me to be persistent."
LOOKING INTO STEM
Tripi said McArthur's answer was helpful and thought it was cool that she got the opportunity to ask an astronaut a question.
"You don't usually see astronauts right in front of you on a big screen, so it was interesting," Tripi said.
Tripi said that the STEM field was something she didn't give much thought entering, but after the downlink, she said it gave her something to think about.
"It's something I could consider," she said. "It's not something that I was looking to do but doing this gave me information about how I would."
'I CAN DO THIS'
That was what Shine On! was looking for in this year's conference — giving students resources and tools for them to get interested in STEM and possibly pursue a career in it.
"There's always a future in STEM," Emily Slattery, a Shine On! committee member said. "I hope they see that and say, 'Hey, I can do this.'"
But Slattery also hoped the conference, which also featured close to 30 workshops revolving the STEM field, would get students interested in learning again after more than a year or either remote or hybrid learning.
"I hope they get reinvigorated in learning," Slattery said. "Of course we have a STEM focus, but overall, it's just wanting to use your character traits, like curiosity, with the understanding there's a lot out there you can do, especially in STEM."
Tripi welcomed that change of pace the conference gave.
"It's been kind of crazy," Tripi said about her school year, "because we're five days in-person every week at this school, so when someone gets the coronavirus, we have to go virtual for a couple days or you get quarantined."
Tripi said she has been quarantined two or three times in the last year.
"It gets kind of annoying because you never know when it's going to happen," she said.
But the conference, Tripi said, "gets your mind off it."
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