Three STEM stories still unfolding | Science & Technology

Coughlin is this year’s student honoree for the seventh annual TechWomen Awards, a program organized and celebrated by TechWomen|TechGirls, an initiative of the New Hampshire Tech Alliance. Together with Karen Pringle, the educator honoree, and Paige Yeater, the business honoree, she is part of a new generation of women making their voices heard in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

GRACE COUGHLIN: As I move my own professional endeavors forward, I just know these connections and relationships will contribute to my future success.Coughlin’s responsibilities at Dartmouth are at the Center for Technology and Behavioral Health, where she has had the opportunity to work with a role model in Dr. Lisa Marsch, the center’s director. Her area of research is working to support specific innovations and technologies that will help in understanding and providing solutions in the mental health field.

“For my entire high school experience, I’ve had an interest in the intersection of technology and entrepreneurship,” Coughlin said in a phone interview. “I’m most interested in being part of future innovations and entrepreneurial solutions to our behavior and mental health crisis.”

She sits on Gov. Chris Sununu’s Youth Advisory Council. When her school didn’t have an entrepreneur club, she started one.

And she took on an independent study project, calling and interviewing 50 prominent entrepreneurs and business owners, including the CEO of Nike.

“My main focus,” she said, “was to uncover their own personal approaches to remaining mentally strong in the challenges of their lives.” The initiative wasn’t an extra-credit school project, but for her own enrichment, she said.

She wasn’t intimidated to call the CEOs, she said. “I am an outgoing person, and I was happy to have the opportunity to talk to them.”

Her extracurricular activities include varsity field hockey, and she credits team sports for some of her success. “The time needed, the amount of commitment has helped shape me as a person,” she said. She also enjoys all the amenities of New Hampshire outdoors, including hiking, swimming and skiing.

Her plan for the future includes using her skills in business or launching her own company to tackle the issues she’s passionate about. She hasn’t chosen a school yet, noting, “I’m looking at as many options as I can.”

Coughlin had heard about the New Hampshire Tech Alliance and said that people from the Upper Valley who were familiar with her work nominated her.

“I’m honored to be recognized by the council, especially to be exposed and to network with so many amazing professional women. I applaud the council for organizing and putting together this event to build out this network in New Hampshire. As I move my own professional endeavors forward, I just know these connections and relationships will contribute to my future success. And for that I am very thankful.”

Coughlin meets like-minded teens in her entrepreneurs’ club and through her other projects, but she’s eager to meet more professionals. “There are not many opportunities for young women like me to connect with these amazing women professionals,” she said.

“We have come a long way,” she said, “but there are still areas women can be way more involved in.”

KAREN PRINGLE: I was a woman in a male-dominated world. Some professors didn’t want me in the program. But that just made me work harder.Pringle, of Webster, teaches at the Spark Academy of Advanced Technologies, a Manchester charter school. Raised in Hooksett, she attended Central High School and the Manchester School of Technology, though MST was in a different iteration at the time, providing only tech education and not a full curriculum. Pringle took two years of electrical technology at MST. She went on to acquire a degree in electronics engineering technology from the New Hampshire Technical Institute. She made it through but had her struggles.

“I was a woman in a male-dominated world,” Pringle said. “Some of the professors didn’t want me in the program. But that just made me work harder.”

This was in the 1980s, and Pringle remembers feeling surprised at the teachers’ attitudes. “By then, I guess I thought it had gone away,” she said of the prejudice.

But Pringle hung in there, and worked in the electrical technology field for 27 years before taking up teaching. “A lot of people,” she said, “had interesting views of what women could and could not do.”

In 2011 she was laid off, and she began thinking about the classroom. Her stepdaughter was having difficulties in school. “She asked me to homeschool her, but at the time I had to work,” Pringle recalled.

In reflecting on her career thus far, Pringle realized that she had spent “from day one mentoring other technicians.” She received a teaching certificate and taught at Pembroke Academy before settling at Spark Academy.

She currently teaches physical science, robotics and electrical fundamentals, and also teaches at Manchester Community College as an adjunct instructor.

Pringle is eager to see more young women take Spark Academy as an option. The school can be “boy-centric,” she observed, noting that a lot of new recruits find out about the school from Boy Scouts and similar activities. The school, established in 2019, works in “cohorts” of 15 students per cohort and two cohorts for each level. Last year there were 28 new students, and only six of them were female, according to Pringle. But it’s getting better, as she pointed out: there’s only one female student in the fourth level and one in the third.

“For too many years, women were undervalued,” Pringle said. “But they can contribute so many things.”

She didn’t feel valued in her early years working in the industry. But in the last few years before she went to teaching, that began to change. “There was a new group of managers who grew up with the idea that women can do this, too.”

Her hopes for her female students, including the ones she hasn’t yet recruited, is, “That they feel comfortable, accepted, and excel.”

Resistance to women in STEM fields, Pringle said, are “the last of the dinosaurs that held women back, and now they’re gone.”

PAIGE YEATER: You’ve got to believe in your own power, and we’ve got to get to girls at a younger age.Yeater is the senior director of security for Mainstay Technologies. In that role, she manages security for both Mainstay and its contracted clients. “I provide guidance and support,” she said in a phone interview.

Her title encompasses project management, engineering, security operations and purchasing. And her career is a series of “happy accidents,” according to Yeater.

She didn’t start out with any interest in tech, she recalled. “I was going to be a physical therapist. But it turned out that I hated hospitals.”

She waited tables throughout college, but college ended, and she needed an “adult” job. She found work with Blackbaud Software in its customer service department. She “tried my hand” at coaching other employees, and found she had an aptitude for computers.

“I was not a STEM kid growing up,” she said.

She worked on the periphery of the tech industry, and came to Blackbaud originally for client services. But the CEO noticed her ability and offered her a job in cyber-security. “I thought, ‘Are you serious?’” Yeater recalled. “But I jumped in, and it was one of the best decisions I ever made.”

Yeater, now 45, thinks younger women have a better opportunity to explore tech and tech careers. “They put Chromebooks in the hands of kindergarteners,” she said.

But there are still some roadblocks and some reluctance, she added. “Parents still say, ‘Are you going to be a teacher or a nurse?’ It’s not an overt ‘you can’t,’ but it’s still ingrained in society.”

Yeater moved to New Hampshire in 2018 and got involved with the Tech Alliance in 2019. She’s done a couple of their “ambassador weeks,” spoken at Bedford High School, her local school, and participates in the Power Breakfasts sponsored by the organization.

“A lot of it is just visibility,” she said. “You’ve got to believe in your own power, and we’ve got to get to girls at a younger age.”

The TechWomen Awards are presented every year in the spring at the TechWomen|TechGirls annual luncheon. For more information on TechWomen|TechGirls or other N.H. Tech Alliance programs, visit www.nhtechalliance.org.