She’s still in middle school, but Alauna Samuels is already mapping out her career.
She’d like to blend her passion for medicine and law by studying forensic science — after graduating from eighth grade at Jones Magnet Middle School.
And she won’t let anyone tell her no.
“We all put our pants on the same way,” she told a full room at the Hampton History Museum that included like-minded students, U.S. Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott, D-Newport News, Virginia Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam and, wife, Pam, Saturday afternoon.
She was one of several middle and high school students who gathered in a conference room for a roundtable spearheaded by the Northams to talk about careers in STEM — science, technology, engineering and math, and sometimes arts and health.
“We’re always adding new letters,” Ralph Northam said. “We’re open to innovation.”
The students in the room came from different middle and high schools in Newport News and Hampton, including Heritage and Denbigh high schools and Spratley Middle School, and all have dreams of entering STEM fields. Dream jobs throughout the room ranged from neurosurgeon, to veterinarian, to ob-gyn.
“Just so you know, pediatric neurosurgeons? We sleep at night. Ob-gyn doctors, they don’t,” Northam, a pediatric neurologist, joked.
He said STEM hits home for him and his wife, an elementary school teacher.
“Those are the fields of the future,” state Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, told the room.
A cornerstone of the conversation was the book and now movie “Hidden Figures,” and the struggles the women overcame to pursue science.
“These were four African-American women in Hampton that changed the world,” Del. Marcia “Cia” Price, D-Newport News, said. “And know that you have that power, too.”
Caleb Farrish, a sophomore at Denbigh High School in the aviation department, wonders what it was like to land on the moon for the first time, or to be Steve Jobs or Thomas Edison. He wants to be the first at something, too.
“The possibilities are endless,” Farrish said.
Mishkin can be reached by phone at 757-247-4532.
