- More than 70 women researchers have participated to date in the Chicas con Cienci@ULL educational program
- The initiative includes an informational audiovisual series and an educational program in the Islands’ schools, which has benefited 560 students this year
As part of the program, the closing ceremony of the third season of the series was recently held in the Aula Magna Blas Cabrera in the Faculty of Sciences in honor of the 24 participating researchers. Along with them, there are now more than 70 women scientists from ULL who have taken part in the program, and 25 more researchers will participate in the fourth season. It will be broadcast during the 2023/24 school year, bringing the series to a hundred episodes.
The event was presided over by the director of the Internships and Employability Office at ULL, Inés Ruiz, who was accompanied at the table by the head of Fundación Cepsa in the Canary Islands, Belén Machado. The event also included presentations by the researchers Bárbara Socas and Nereida Rancel, who, on behalf of all the participants in the third season of the series, spoke about their experience in front of the cameras and about what it meant for them to be able to show women researching in all kinds of fields, with the aim of inspiring young people.
Belén Machado highlighted Fundación Cepsa's firm commitment to science education, one of the organization's three main lines of action, in everything related to training, outreach, and research, three elements that Chicas con Cienci@ULL brings together. "It’s a project for helping us get our young people, especially girls, interested in science and technology careers. It seeks to break gender stereotypes, thanks to the example set by these outstanding women university researchers, as well as to reduce the gap that, unfortunately, still exists in this field," he pointed out.
Along with the series, an educational program was developed throughout the current school year in 11 schools on seven islands, with the participation of students in the 3rd and 4th grades of ESO, and in the 1st grade of Bachillerato. A program that reached 560 students this edition and encompassed a set of guiding, motivational, and educational activities that aim to help improve the performance in school of participating students, as well as increase their interest in pursuing university studies, which will allow them to get better jobs. Each educational session also included an inspirational talk by an established researcher from the University of La Laguna from different fields of science and social science.
The audiovisual series
The episodes from the audiovisual series Chicas con Cienci@ULL are about five minutes long and divided into five main areas: Arts and Humanities, Biomedicine and Health, Science and Society, Science and Technology and, finally, Energy, Biodiversity, and the Environment. In each episode, the participating researcher talks, using accessible language, about her childhood, how she decided to dedicate herself to her research, and about her research work, while at the same time transmitting a motivational message for the youth of the Canary Islands, especially its young women.
The series, broadcasted weekly on the Cienci@ULL YouTube channel and the website www.fundacioncepsa.com, currently has nearly 40,000 views. The University of La Laguna and Fundación Cepsa have been the driving forces behind this series, with the close collaboration of the Directorate General of Youth of the Government of the Canary Islands, the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology and CajaSiete.
