Our 6th Annual Ada Lovelace Day!

Seabury middle school science teacher Jared MacKenzie has long been committed to connecting girls with STEM. That commitment led him to begin Seabury's celebration of Ada Lovelace Day six years ago, a celebration that's become an annual tradition at the middle school.

Every year on the second Tuesday in October we give Ada her props as a role model for women in science and technology and an inspiration for anyone who marches to their own drummer.

“There are still not a lot of women working in STEM fields,” said Mr. MacKenzie. “I think it’s important that girls at Seabury – boys, too – learn about the different opportunities in those fields from people in the real world.”

Established in 2009, Ada Lovelace Day is celebrated internationally – if relatively modestly – in various ways. Here at Seabury, we celebrate by inviting women with STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) backgrounds to share their knowledge and experience with our students through conversations, presentations and hands-on activities.

Born in 1815, Ada was the daughter of the famous British poet Lord Byron. Fearing that Ada would develop her father’s moody temperament, her mother sought to instill rigor and self-discipline by insisting she study math and science – an unheard of pursuit for women at the time.

Ada was a natural, though, and eventually became a protégé of Charles Babbage, regarded as the father of the computer. Ada eventually wrote a paper describing how codes could be created for Babbage’s analytical machine – and went down in history as the world’s first computer programmer.

This year our students heard from seven women working in STEM fields: a pediatric ear, nose and throat surgeon; a Boeing chemist; a trauma recovery specialist; a structural engineer; a wetlands biologist; a specialist in healthcare analytics; and a doctor who talked about metabolites and chemicals.

As always, our kids are excited and engaged by these presenters and ask great questions.

A few of their questions and observations:

"From your experience, when people have a hard time hearing, what makes that happen?"

"What does a cochlear implant sound like?"

"Trauma is more common than I realized."

"A long time ago women didn't have rights. They couldn't vote. It's good that things have changed so much that all our visitors today were women in science fields. It the 60s they would have all been men. It makes me happy that more people have rights to do different things today."