Cathy Coughlin STEM Scholars Honored at Virtual Celebration
Northwestern University's Center for Talent Development (CTD) recognized new and returning Cathy Coughlin STEM Scholars and their families during a recent virtual ceremony and celebration.
The annual event honoring 22 exceptional middle school students featured several guest speakers, including School of Education and Social Policy Dean David Figlio; Paula Olszewski-Kubilius, director of the Center for Talent Development; Therese Fauerbach, CEO and co-founder of The Northridge Group, which offers consulting services; and Phyllis Lockett, CEO of LEAP Innovations, a Chicago-based nonprofit working to change education.
“View your talent as something in the making, something you’re developing over time with this summer experience,” Olszewski-Kubilius told the Coughlin Scholars. “But it’s also what you do in school, what you learn in your family, and what you do in your community. Your gifts are evolving and growing through your own efforts, and through the right opportunities.”
The Cathy Coughlin STEM Scholars program, established by friends and family of the late Cathy M. Coughlin, provides academically talented girls from the Evanston/Chicago area with scholarships to participate in three years of enrichment and accelerated STEM programming through CTD.
Coughlin received an economics degree from Northwestern in 1979. She was a Northwestern trustee and former AT&T global marketing executive who advocated for equal opportunities for women in corporate leadership and pushed young women to pursue careers in STEM fields.
“Cathy would have appreciated all the hard work you young women and your families are putting in to find areas of study you truly love and where you can make the biggest impact on our world, said Coughlin’s brother, Kevin. "You're showing characteristics of curiosity, perseverance, discipline, bravery, fairness, justice and refusing to be limited by society’s low expectations."
Coughlin Scholars participate in CTD’s fast-paced, academic summer program and chose from a wide variety of offerings. The newest cohort of five girls took two or three week classes such as Girl Power Math: Stem Innovators, Big League Analytics, FUSE Studio Design Challenges, and Intro to Biomedicine.
“At SESP and CTD, it's essential that we help you see your opportunities are unlimited,” Figlio said. “Our aspiration is for you to identify, pursue, and go deeper into the things that you absolutely love – things that you wake up in the morning and go to sleep thinking about.”
The event was hosted by Susan Corwith, associate director of the Center for Talent Development. It also featured Elliott Cady (MS97), admissions and pathways advising manager at CTD.
In addition, the girls and their families were joined by guest speakers Lockett and Fauerbach, Coughlin’s friends and founding members of the Cathy Coughlin STEM Scholars program. They detailed their own education and career paths, offering the girls encouragement, strategies, and real-world advice.
Lockett grew up on Chicago’s south side and attended Chicago Public Schools before studying engineering at Purdue and receiving her master’s degree from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. She had a successful career creating new products for General Mills and Kraft Foods but felt pulled back to her community and towards non-profit and civic work.
In 2014, after working as President and CEO of New Schools for Chicago for a decade, she started, LEAP Innovations. Education, she said, doesn’t just open doors; it’s something that can never be taken away.
“By pursuing STEM, you're learning how to be problem solvers, how to take on ambiguity and uncertainty, and how to be part of a team that thinks of new solutions to create a better world,” Lockett told the girls. “The kinds of experiences that you're gaining through CTD will help you be the champions that figure out what the next generation of learning looks like, or the next generation of healthcare. We need smart, bright young women to do that.”
She also encouraged the girls to embrace being the “only one” in a study group or engineering or coding class. “The key is to create networks,” she said. “Make friends with your cohort here and keep them. Start to be comfortable with being the only one and reach out to others who aren't like you, or who you can learn from and work with. It’s really, really important to pave the way for others to come behind you.”
Fauerbach, the daughter of immigrants and the oldest of ten children, said she was the child her parents tried things out on. She studied accounting because it was the degree that her dad would allow her to go to college to pursue. But she values having the skill set.
“You use what's in your background for whatever life presents you with, and then you can move forward,” she said.
Fauerbach and Coughlin met when they worked together in what was then a primarily male world of telecommunications. Coughlin began researching when women tended to drop out of STEM classes, and her results pointed to the middle school years, when girls were choosing non-STEM electives, and boys were choosing STEM.
“Cathy zeroed in on how to open up opportunities for young women, young girls that don't necessarily have the coursework to challenge them within their own school district,” Fauerbach said. “With summer or evening offerings, we thought we could continue to move them through this funnel so their options are infinite. We kept returning to the fact that there’s a shortage of women in engineering, science and tech roles. We wanted to make sure that changed for the next generation.”
She urged the girls to keep challenging themselves, something that Center for Talent Development classes are designed to do. “As you build your own personal resume of classes you've pushed yourself on, you keep opening the door to opportunity,” Fauerbach said.
The application for the new cohort of five Coughlin STEM Scholars will open in January.