Michelle Reaves

I started in this space of educating and exposing young people to STEM education over 22 years ago through a role at Wayne State University, where I was initially just helping to write grants for a friend in the College of Engineering. Once I learned about the disparities between students pursuing STEM degrees, particularly with regards to young women and girls, I instantly wanted to do more, wanted to learn more, and wanted to figure out how we can bridge that gap. I started working on programming to ensure that initially young women, and then all youth, had more exposure to science, technology, engineering, and math curriculum at the youngest stage possible so that they can possibly pursue that as a career path going forward. That led me to my current position with DAPCEP, where I started 15 years ago as a deputy director managing all the programming. When we started, we were serving 3,500 students. When I took over 10 years ago, we really changed how we were engaging with students. We used to just see students in summers and on Saturdays, but now I see students everywhere - after school, summer, Saturdays, in community centers, at partner centers - and now we serve 17,000 students a year. My work really boils down to ensuring that students are excited, motivated, and academically prepared to pursue STEM degrees. It's been wonderful to see young people come back after graduating - they come back and teach, they talk about how the program has impacted their lives, and the young people I worked with at Wayne State are now engineers who come and volunteer to show students the possibilities of how they can also be in that same space.