Fun Fact: Koopmans is the captain of her high school Robotic's team.
Serena Koopmans, the director of the curriculum design team at STEMpathize is a grade 11 student, and she wants to explore a career in cognitive science because it is a combination of both psychology and artificial intelligence, two of her biggest passions.
Koopmans first found interest in the topic by watching YouTube videos and TED Talks on cognitive science during the pandemic.
“My sophomore year I took some community college classes on psychology and I did really well in the class,” Koopmans said. “Following that, I've done more mental health volunteering. This summer, I did an internship for psychology, and those were just great experiences.” She has also started an AI club at her school, where they bring in guest speakers who work in AI.
“We talk about AI, debate it. Last year, we did this huge research survey on all the students and staff at my school to see their views on using ChatGPT in education.” Outside of her impressive academic life, she also studies Italian. From grades six through ten, she took Italian classes because she was born in Italy. She also participated in an exchange program this past spring. Serena hopes to use Italian in her future. She plans on minoring in Italian and studying abroad, where she can hopefully learn more about mental health in Europe.
From the perspective of those interacting with STEMpathize, Koopman’s favourite part is how accessible it is. STEMpathize, much like AI and technology, is not discriminatory like other resources, such as dangerous chemicals, expensive lab equipment, and exclusive classes, which may not be accessible to everyone. It is free and open to kids all over the United States to participate. The programs are made with material accessibility in mind. The curriculum design team tries to ensure that experiments use very basic materials that are carried in most households, so that anyone can participate. One thing Koopmans wants to implement within the curriculum design team is an improvement of assessing areas of difficulty for students, and supplementing this with remedial lessons. On top of this, she is hoping to work on making lessons/workshops shorter, because post-COVID the commitment to an eight to ten week course is not always possible.
Being the director of the curriculum design team, Koopmans has a number of responsibilities. Every season, the curriculum design team decides on two different topics to focus on. They create curriculum for elementary students — grades three to five — and for middle school students — grades six to eight. Over the course of the season, eight to ten sessions, each one to two hours in length, are created for each subject. In the past, some of the subjects have been computer science, biology, artificial intelligence, and climate change. Currently, the team is developing curricula for experimental science for elementary students and rocketry and aerodynamics for middle school students. Seeing as the curriculum is being designed by Koopman’s team, curriculum designers affect the workshop facilitators a lot. Workshop facilitators are the interns that lead the workshops, so their success is highly dependent on the curriculum designers. Not only does Koopmans’ team make the actual slides used in the workshops, but they also leave comments on the slides which include tips, tricks, things to mention, and how to structure the lessons. Soon, Koopmans will implement a new system which will change the way the two teams work together: the two teams will be implementing a “partner system.” Partners, including one member from each team, will be partnered together to practice the lessons and go through the slides to see what can be improved on.
Despite her love for STEM, there is one major quirk of STEM that Koopmans takes issue with. She believes a major issue within the subject field is that STEM is being forced onto everyone without acknowledging the importance of other fields of study, such as the arts and language studies. She identifies that there are many STEM students that have over-inflated egos, caused by the academic challenges that come with their work.
“There are so many other options. You don't even have to go to college. Art is important. English is important. Languages are important. When you look at the trends, AI might be replacing a lot of STEM related jobs. So it's just something to be wary of,” said Koopmans.
Serena Koopmans, the director of the curriculum design team at STEMpathize, is an invaluable member of the STEMpathize team. Not only is her work in developing curriculum design completely necessary for the workshops themselves, but it is also necessary to keep STEMpathize up and running. Outside of STEMpathize is no different: Serena works hard and balances a busy schedule to run the robotics and AI club at school, volunteers in mental health, studies her passions outside of STEM, and somehow still makes time to spend with friends and family. Serena, like many other people in the world of STEM, is more than what she contributes to science.
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