Sjournee Cornelius-Quaidoo

As a sophomore, Sjournee Cornelius-Quaidoo is looking forward to being either a microbiologist, environmental engineer, or zoologist. Cornelius-Quaidoo is currently taking Principles of Engineering and chemistry, and plans to continue her science career, potentiallt in both of these fields..
Q: What do you like about science?
A: “I like the experimentation and the research that goes into it. Just finding new things is really awesome.”
Q: Do you take any classes that apply to advanced science?
A: “Physics intertwined with [Principles of Engineering], so because of that I am able to take online biology. And since I’m in chemistry also, next year I’ll be able to start fresh with sciences and do AP.”
Q: Do you plan to go to college or get a job involving science?
A: “I’m kind of all around the board, but I definitely really like biology and might want to do something with animals, like zoology or something, I thought that would be kind of cool. [My plan] changes a lot because there’s so much science, like microbiology, little things that I like to do…[I’m also interested in] environmental engineering, there’s also technical engineering, and biotechnician, which is like a part of engineering.”
Q: Are you involved in any extracurriculars with science?
A: “If the environment counts, Green Tigers, and then Green Team at Southwest.”

Michael Diaz

Although senior Michael Diaz would say he’s a little more involved in math than science, he still enjoys the engineering program that he’s in: Project Lead the Way. He plans to compete with a team of four this spring for a scholarship of $20,000 by solving a real life applicable problem. Diaz will be getting a head start on a future in math and science by completing his college math credits by the end of his high school career.
Q: What do you like about math and science?
A: “Its very abstract, but also very simple. You can always see how everything is derived and it’s really enjoyable. It comes pretty easy to me, like someone who doesn’t get math wouldn’t enjoy it as much. I like the paradoxes, those are always fun to work with.”
Q: Do you take any classes or extracurriculars that apply to advanced Math or Science?
A: “Next semester I’m going to be taking both of the Calculus 3 classes…differential equations and multi-variable calculus. I’ll be taking one class at the U [University of Minnesota] and one class at MCTC.”
Q: What opportunities have you gotten because of the math and/or science that you do?
A: “[This spring I am competing for a] $20,000 scholarship. It’s 14 hours of straight math, so they’ll give us a problem, a real life application problem that we have to solve and create like a 17 page paper.”
Q: Do you plan to go to college or get a job involving math/science?
A: “I might become a chemical engineer, I also like petroleum engineering, but then again, I do like mechanical as well. It’s all up in the air, all classes are pretty much the same freshman year anyways.”

Abby Harrison

Abby Harrison has huge plans to travel through space and be the first astronaut on Mars. In order to do this, she has been learning under her mentor Luca Parmitano who recently returned from space, where he continued correspondence with Harrison. For now she is taking care of her school, sports, and future plans that are out of this world.
Q: What do you like about math and science?
A: “It’s the curiosity and the wonder, the idea that there is so much more out there that we don’t know.”
Q: Do you take any classes that apply to advanced math or science?
A: “I take Calculus BC and chemistry at the University of Minnesota. Other than that not really because the programs that I am a part of are the ones that I started myself, such as the educational program that I started. It’s just a program that I started to take the experience of both seeing the Soviet Union’s launch in Russia, and having a mentor on the International Space Station, and share it with people and kids around the world to hopefully inspire them both to join the sciences and math, and also to follow their own passions and give people kind of a plan of understanding how to do that.”
Q: What opportunities have you gotten because of the math and science that you do?
A: “I was actually in Russia for eight days and then I was in Baikonur, Kazakhstan for five days.”
Q: What was your Ted Talk in Tampa Bay, Florida like?
A: “The overlying theme of the Tedx Talk conference that I was at was from the past to the future. And so they asked me to come in and speak a little about what it means to, actually they were very open, but I decided to speak about what it means to dream big and act big and inspire others. So I went and I gave about an 18 minute long speech where I used motivational stories, my personal experiences…so that was the outline of the speech that I gave and then at the end I ended up getting a standing ovation, which was pretty cool.”
Q: Do you plan to go to college or get a job involving math/science?
“I want to be an astronaut, and even more than that, I want to be the first astronaut to Mars. A big part of what I’m doing is education to the populus, both of the United States and around the world. To try and get people both educated and excited about the space program and about going to Mars because that’s truly what we need. We are technologically capable of it we just need the motivation and the initiative, which has to come from the masses, from the people to push for that mission to happen.”

Cory Pehling

Freshman Cory Pehling came from Marcy Open to South this year. During the freshman orientation, Pehling noticed the Robotics Class and signed up to take it along with all other courses related to engineering. While enjoying his time with math and the challenges that come with it, he also likes computers. He uses them for anything from playing video games to writing.
Q: What do you like about math?
A: “The challenge, I guess, because there’s nothing quite as satisfactory as when you complete something that you’ve been stuck on for awhile…I do computer stuff when I’m at home. I’m not much of a sports person , more of the logistics I guess.”
Q: Do you take any classes that apply to advanced math?
A: “I have robotics as my first hour class…I signed up for everything in that category.”
Q: Do you plan to go to college or get a job involving math?
A: “I imagine that I keep going where I think I’m going to go, I plan to be a video game designer or something like that. And that type of thing needs a lot of math because of programing.”