SILS senior bridges STEM gender gap

Julia Crume grew up playing video games with an older brother who also had a passion for tech and building his own computers. At Mooresville Public High School, she excelled in math, taking her first programming class, AP Computer Science, as a senior. But she often felt unwelcome in classrooms dominated by males.

“I was in a lot of high-level math classes, and I had some jerks in my classes. That kinda fueled my fire,” said Crume, now a senior in the School of Information and Library Science.

Crume acknowledged that her reaction was not the typical one. Most women leave STEM fields in middle school due to a lack of support from teachers and classmates, she discovered in her research for a high school paper. Crume decided she wanted to help change that. In high school, she asked women in STEM fields to make encouraging videos that she could share with middle school girls in the area.

She continued her outreach work at UNC-Chapel Hill, joining clubs like STEM Sisters, where she became a community outreach executive as a sophomore, and UNC Females Excelling More in Math, Engineering and Science. For UNC FEMMES, she is the counselor director for a day camp for fourth, fifth and sixth grade girls who come to campus to learn about science from volunteer professors and graduate students.

She also helps organize Women in Tech Week on campus, which includes job interview practice. She’s on Carolina’s student technology council and works part time at the software survey company Qualtrics.

It’s tough to balance it all, but Crume finds the activities incredibly fulfilling.

“When you’re in college and you’re getting so burned out from STEM, it’s nice to be reminded of what made you love it in the first place. To see these girls get so excited about making slime and other silly things, it’s amazing,” she said.

She started Carolina as a computer science major but switched to SILS. “As much as I liked coding, I wanted to learn more. I loved that I got a better overall understanding of the business side of technology, and I was still able to code.”

Crume credits the SILS staff for inspiring and supporting her as she explored her various passions in technology. “The really cool thing about SILS is how supportive they are. A SILS class was my first class in college where the professor memorized everyone’s names, and it was a big class. It meant a lot to me.”

She particularly enjoyed the Information and Computer Ethics class led by adjunct faculty member Dianne Martin, who was a programmer for the Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 space missions.

“We talked about the ethics of AI and other up-and-coming technologies,” Crume said. “Our end-of-semester project was a research presentation at the SILS showcase. The dean of SILS came, and we got to present what we found to an audience.”

A junior, Crume only needs to complete her capstone project class for her information science major, but she is also majoring in new media, with a minor in data science. After she leaves Carolina, advocacy for women in STEM will still be in her future.

“I don’t want to have to think about other little girls experiencing the same things I did,” Crume said. “I was fortunate that I had brothers who helped me have thick skin but also supported me. Not everyone has that, so hopefully soon other girls won’t have to fear things like that ever again.”

This story was written by Will Hassell, a former student intern at SILS.