Podcast: Pioneers

8. Miss America: How Camille Schrier put STEM on the national stage

The talent portion of the Miss America pageant typically consists of contestants singing, dancing, or playing a musical instrument. All that changed when the most recent Miss America, Camille Schrier, carried out a STEM demonstration during her talent portion. The STEM Class Podcast host Anthony Arno talks with Schrier about her lifelong passion for science…

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6. Biosphere 2: A $200 million failed space colony?

Biosphere 2 was originally meant to demonstrate the viability of a closed ecological system to support and maintain human life in outer space.  Its first mission was a two year experiment sealing a crew of eight humans from planet earth.  What went wrong?  John’s earliest memory of a teacher in school Academic background Is there…

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5. A real life Rosie the Riveter: Dr. Frances Carter

Shortly after my interview with Dr. Carter, she passed at 98 years old.  Whether or not you’re a STEM enthusiast, I invite you to hear the remarkable story of a passionate woman who served her country well in the early days of WW II by working in a Birmingham B-29 aircraft factory.  She would later…

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4. Peter MacDonald – Navajo Code Talker

At the age of 15 as a Navajo Native American, Peter MacDonald enlisted in the US Marines simply because he admired the official uniform.  Shortly after boot camp, he was recruited into a secret military program that would rely on a language that has no written form for what would later be known as a…

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