For Vanessa Diaz, One “Year of Yes” Led to Years of Projects with CCS

When child psychological development researcher Vanessa Diaz arrived at Virginia Tech in 2017, she decided to do a “year of yes” while she explored her new community. On a mission to find her people, attending “any and all things,” she found herself one day at an event for a local author who was presenting their first self-published children’s book. One of the three other people who attended the event was Carrie Kroehler, the associate director of the Center for Communicating Science (CCS). Neither of them knew it at the time, but that chance meeting sparked an important part of Diaz’s research and work and important support for a new program at the CCS.

    Learning of Diaz’s interest in child development, Kroehler told her about an outreach project the CCS was just beginning. Initiated by graduate student Caitlin Colleary, the Girls Launch! kindergarten outreach program was shaped by a study that showed that girls in kindergarten may already have negative gender stereotypes around intelligence. Diaz was immediately invested, and her involvement in Girls Launch! developed into a research program for her lab.

    Since that accidental meeting six years ago, more than 30 Virginia Tech researchers have made their way to Giles County public schools to help break stereotypes about women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). Diaz has collected data in both kindergarten and middle school classrooms related to STEM gender stereotypes and has published some of her findings in “Are Scientists Smart? Kindergarteners’ Gendered Understanding and Use of Descriptors About Science and Intelligence.”

    Now a collegiate assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, Diaz has always been interested in how the human mind worked. Growing up in Columbia, she was known as the “little psychologist” by her friends. As an undergraduate student at Florida International University, Diaz thought she would major in international relations, but her interest in the human mind also led her to take a psychology course.

    “I loved it. This was one of those experiences that made me believe very deeply” in the importance of psychology, she said. That one course shifted her career goals. She decided to pursue her education in psychology and follow her interests in cognitive psychology, consciousness, and biology.

    In graduate school, Diaz found out about developmental psychology through her cognitive psychology focus. She then became interested in “the theory of the mind,” the ability to understand the way the emotions, beliefs, and thoughts of other people work. This led her to her path of studying child development.

    Unlike many programs during COVID-19, Girls Launch! thrived. When students and teachers were not able to attend in-person classes, Kroehler, Diaz, and CCS director Patty Raun received the Girls Launch! Kindergarten Science Outreach Continuation and Expansion Rapid Response Grant from the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology (ICAT) and used the funds to provide stipends to 10 female grad students in the sciences. The graduate students were mentored by Raun and Kroehler and each produced a kindergarten science video and activity guide for use in classrooms.

    The most rewarding part of the Girls Launch! program for Diaz, she said, is how multifaceted it is.

    “It is all positive. You share and affect so many different types of people,” she said. “We have reached a lot of kindergarten kids in Giles County. It’s all rewarding, the Girls Launch universe.” The graduate students who worked on this project not only got to crush stereotypes about women in science; they also got to learn video production and editing, she said. And, Diaz emphasized, “It forged a path to a whole, entire new program of research for me.”

    With her kindergarten gender stereotypes research underway, Diaz participated in a SciArt incubator with the CCS and connected with a group of artists. Together they created “In the Burrow of Science,” which combines poetry, video, music, and children’s artwork, all stemming from Diaz’s research with kindergarten children. The piece premiered May 2 of 2022 and was performed October 26, 2023, at the University of Miami Frost School of Music.

    “Seeing the campus and university community come alive in this very exciting way through the work of the center is wonderful,” Diaz said. “It’s amazing to be a part of that.”

    Diaz recently led a Girls Launch! kindergarten visit, introducing the class to three “girl scientists” from the Department of Psychology. Each of the three kindergarten classrooms at Eastern Elementary/Middle School was split into three groups. With a PowerPoint and a model brain, the visiting researchers guided children through different brain functions and helped them create a dance out of each function. When graduate student Sam Kempker-Margherio ended the session, she called the “girl scientists” to the front of the class – and two girl kindergarteners joined them. This shows the impact of teaching young children that girls can be scientists too, Diaz said.

  Diaz also works with the AWARE program through the Virginia Tech Women’s Center, which recruits undergraduate students to become mentors for girls at Blacksburg Middle School. She has also recently spoken at Floyd County High School about careers in psychology. As recipient of the College of Science’s Diversity Inclusion Fellowship, she will be featured in a VT News video for Hispanic Heritage Month.  

    If you are interested in bringing your research to kindergarten students through Girls Launch!, contact CCS student intern Meg Luciani (megluciani25@vt.edu) to learn more and schedule a visit.   

By Heather Winslow, Center for Communicating Science graduate assistant