Expanding Your Horizons organizers reorganize, seek new blood

By JUNO OGLE
Daily Press Staff
A program promoting STEM — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — fields for girls has existed in Grant County for 30 years, but it could end if new organizers cannot be found.
Last Saturday morning, about 18 girls attended the Southwest New Mexico STEM Roadshow in Harlan Hall on the Western New Mexico University campus.
That’s a far cry from the program’s predecessor, Expanding Your Horizons, which started in 1993, according to a longtime organizer of the events, Mikki Jemin.
In years past, Expanding Your Horizons attracted more than 350 girls from four counties. They had more than 20 workshops in science, technology, engineering and math to choose from in locations spread across the WNMU campus.
The last Expanding Your Horizons was in February 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down in-person events, Karen Love said.
“In 2021 and 2022, we managed to continue the concept by creating more than 200 take-home boxes each year with about six STEM activities,” she said. “Boxes were delivered to girls through their schools.”
“This was the first year that we were trying to come back to close to a normal level,” Jemin said.
But it was also time to try something new.
“This is like the bridge to the next phase,” Jemin said of Saturday’s event. “I think it’s just time for a whole reimagining.”
“For 2023, we decided to take a measured return to the in-person approach, with smaller, more localized events, focusing on fifth and sixth grade girls,” Love said.
Thus, Expanding Your Horizons is now the Southwest New Mexico STEM Roadshow, with the idea of also presenting workshops in Reserve, Columbus and Deming. So far, the Silver City event was the only one scheduled, Jemin said.
“We came up with the roadshow because we thought we would be able to go to some of these different schools. We still hope to get a few of those, where we actually take it to them, but I think it’s just time for a whole reimagining” of the program, Jemin said.
This isn’t the first time Jemin has faced the program’s end, she said.
“When I started doing this, that was the 20th, and I said, ‘This is so awesome! When do we start again?’ and they said, ‘Oh, never again — it’s too much work,’” Jemin recalled. “I said, ‘Wrong answer.’”
She’s now been organizing the STEM program for 13 years, and said it’s time for a new generation to lead the program and show girls what they can be.
“I’m going to be 72. Nobody wants to be an old, white grandma,” she said. “They need to see women that are closer to their age.”
Most of the presenters fit that image, such as Andrea Kennedy and Corrina Beaven, metallurgists with Freeport-McMoRan’s Tyrone and Chino mines, who led the girls in experiments to show how copper is extracted from rock, or Dr. Jenica Laney and Dr. Tiffany Pierce from Arenas Valley Animal Clinic, who had girls help them examine Mouse, a dog they brought to their session.
Other presenters at Saturday’s event were Jazmine Tuning, a WNMU student, and Krista Wood, Ariana Garcia and Erin Wood, assistant professors of nursing at WNMU.
The program has had plenty of support that keeps it free of charge for its young participants, Love said, with Freeport as its biggest longtime financial contributor as well as providing staff to present workshops. The program is also financially supported through Give Grandly! and the Silver City Food Co-op’s Roundup program, and this year also received a grant from the International Women’s Forum of New Mexico.
There have also been a number of community volunteers over the years, Jemin said.
She said she believes that getting to those smaller towns is important, noting that most of the girls from Silver City schools in Saturday’s program were also involved in sports, theater and other extracurricular activities.
“You drive to the Columbus school and show me what those kids have got,” Jemin said. “It was a huge deal for them.”
The overall message of the STEM Roadshow is the most important thing, she said.
“The STEM piece is the hook. The main goal is to stay in school. Stay in school, have choices,” Jemin said. “I’ve told the kids every year, you will have jobs, you will be doing things we can’t begin to imagine right now. Do math, pay attention in science, stick with school.”
Juno Ogle may be reached at juno@scdaily press.com.