For Georgia Tech undergraduates Jasmine Lopez-Sandoval and Alex Castrejon, their paths toward professional success in college and beyond began in middle school when they participated in the GoSTEM program, a collaborative partnership at Tech between the Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics, and Computing and the Center for Teaching and Learning originally and now with Institute Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. GoSTEM promotes STEM academic achievement and college attendance among Latino students, connecting Georgia Tech faculty, staff, and students directly to K-12 students and their teachers through innovative educational programs.

Lopez-Sandoval became involved with GoSTEM’s Pathways program at Lilburn Middle School in the sixth grade, allowing her to engage in the fields of STEM learning and to discover new educational and professional career paths.

“What I enjoyed most were the summer camps. Working with professors gave me an idea what it would be like to be in a college setting,” Lopez-Sandoval said. “Coming from someone who is first-generation, I didn’t really know what it meant to be able to even go to college, in a sense.”

Lopez-Sandoval is currently in her second year at Georgia Tech after accepting the G. Wayne Clough Georgia Tech Promise Program full-ride scholarship. She spent her first summer participating in the Languages for Business and Technology program in Korea as part of her international affairs major, a degree which she hopes to turn into a career focused around either global security or public policy.

For Castrejon, the GoSTEM Pathways program at Radloff Middle School offered an outlet for his interests as well as a new career path. Through GoSTEM, he prepared for the ACT and SAT, toured Georgia Tech, and even put together his first resume.

Fittingly, Castrejon was at a robotics work session preparing for an upcoming competition when he learned he had been accepted into his dream school - Georgia Tech. He also was selected for the A. James Clark Scholars Program in the College of Engineering, which helps support his undergraduate education in mechanical engineering.

In his time at Georgia Tech, the now senior has joined various clubs, excelled academically, studied abroad, and interned with Apple in California and Google in Chicago. Seeing the success that these opportunities have opened up for him, he said that his goal professionally is to be able to mirror the generosity that was shown to him.

“One of the things that I think GoSTEM definitely added of value to my life is that it brought together people who had the same academic goals as I,” he said. “I’d like to pay it forward in the way my scholarship was funded. That’s beautiful to me.”

--Michael Turner, CEISMC Communications