Diana Wang-Martin

Diana Wang-Martin is a chemistry teacher, IB MYP Coordinator, and Lead STEM Teacher Advisor at Glenforest Secondary School. She is also the recipient of the Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching Excellence and Teaching Excellence in STEM. She collaborated with a group of 60 students to raise over $35,000 for the 2015 Xperience STEM conference for 1800 students and has raised almost 60,000$ for the Canadian Youth STEM Conference 2017. Sponsors have included Microsoft, GM, Siemens, NSERC and McMaster University.

“The STEM Conference started out as a successful Health Talk event organized by a few students to introduce careers beyond traditional health careers, such as medicine and nursing, to Glenforest students. We decided after the Health Talk that students needed to be introduced to the many careers in STEM and not just in Health. Additionally, through the organization of the Health Talk, the student organizers were developing their soft skills. We also saw an increase in their confidence level after organizing the event. We thought that by organizing a larger conference for not just Glenforest students but also students of other schools, the attending students would be introduced to a large variety of careers in STEM fields and that student organizers would have more opportunities to develop their soft skills and increase confidence.

One change that I would implement in the Canadian education curriculum would be to make computer programming (coding) mandatory in elementary, middle and secondary schools. Even if students choose to not pursue a career in computing, having learned the fundamentals of programming would be beneficial to students.”