Women in STEM: Olivia Joyce

This week, I had the opportunity to talk with Olivia Joyce (senior, chemistry) about her journey throughout her four years at Andrews as a STEM student.

Hi, Olivia! Could you introduce to the Student Movement audience what chemistry majors study, and what about it is distinct from other STEM majors?
Yes, so chemistry is the study of materials: its atoms and molecules and how they interact with each other and with the forces around them. It involves every little thing that makes up everything. It’s different from biology, because chemistry focuses on the materials that compose everything around us—including ourselves—while biology has a focus on the living organism, their systems, and the environment. In my humble opinion, I believe chemistry is the intersection of both biology and physics, because chemistry uses physics when explaining how life functions on a biochemical level and why particles behave the way they do. In fact, I'm taking a physical chemistry class right now, and it's purely about the intersection of physics and chemistry in which students study questions like why particles interact the way that they do and what kind of forces they exert on each other.

How did you come to choose chemistry as your major? Did you declare this major in your first year, and if so, where do you think you first found this passion or interest in science—and especially in chemistry?
Before I started my freshman year of high school, I told my mom that I wanted to take chemistry because I just took life science in eighth grade and wanted something else. I also wanted to challenge myself through this subject since my parents had always talked about how hard chemistry is. But I was genuinely surprised as I went through the chemistry because it combined math and reality in a way that I didn't know they connected. Because up until that point, math was not necessarily an easy subject—it felt like an entertaining but not meaningful game in which I would simply find the right answers. But chemistry made math meaningful. It opened my eyes to realize there can be an explanation or reason for every phenomena. And it made me think that if there's a reason for everything on the scientific level, maybe that extends to other aspects of life, on the spiritual level or moral level. Perhaps there are explanations for human behavior on a psychological level. So ever since freshman year of highschool, I was planning on becoming a chemical engineer because I wanted to do chemistry for a living, and engineering sounded like a cool thing to do.

And then, I went to Andrews SciFest during the preview event, and I talked with different Chemistry professors like Dr. Randall and Dr. Ahlberg about how I was kind of going back and forth between chemistry and chemical engineering. They suggested reading the course descriptions and what seemed more interesting, and it was at that point that I realized that I would enjoy studying just chemistry itself, and this would be the subject that will help me keep looking for the answers to the deep questions I started formulating my freshman year in the chemistry class.

That’s a cool story! And Olivia, I think not many students within the department have an interest and story like yours, since many STEM students are pre-professional students. Since you are pursuing chemistry outside of a pre-professional goal, do you think you had some hard time finding someone to discuss and share your interest in this field?
That's a funny question because I often find myself as one of the two or three people not taking a pre-professional route in an entire classroom. I think it changes your perspective in some way, too. I'm planning on teaching high school, and some people asked me why I would bother putting in any effort towards subjects like biochemistry or physical chemistry since it's very likely I would never touch anything like this again. But all students, regardless of why they are taking the class, give their best, pursue excellence in these subjects, and find a way to make the subject interesting. It’s a practice of self-discipline, which is a skill that you need no matter what career path you go into. So I think I was able to connect with the students regardless of their reason for majoring in chemistry because we are all going through the same phase and task, even if our end goals are different.

On top of the self-discipline you mentioned, what do you think you learned from your four years as a chemistry major? Do you have a meaningful moment that you can share with us today?
Pursuing a STEM degree has very much taught me what does and doesn't matter in life. When I was younger, I wanted to do things for the sake of admiration from people. But pride isn't a good motive. Pride will only take you so far as motivation in college and for the rest of your life. What will take you far is your passion and willingness to sacrifice your own immediate gratification to do something for the benefit of others or for greater good. I think we all have reached this mindset to some level in our college careers. We still want challenges, but for a more mature purpose. It’s really about why you're studying, not what you're studying.

I also remember that you are planning to do research next semester. Could you give me more details about this research project?
Yes—it's not official yet, but I plan on working with Dr. Murray to conduct further research on the electrophilic carbonyl addition, which was a group project that my organic chemistry labs started last semester. It will mainly be about collecting and comparing data for different experiments utilizing electrophilic carbonyl addition. I think it’s cool that I can work on this research since electrophilic carbonyl addition is a mechanism that hasn't been studied in depth, according to Dr. Murray.

Awesome, I’m excited for your research! Also, you mentioned teaching high school. Are you planning to go straight into a teaching career after graduation? What do you hope to pursue using your chemistry degree after graduation?
I plan to do a year of overseas student missions to teach math and science after I graduate. And then I would like to pursue a master’s, but probably not right away. I think that would happen after getting some teaching experience, but I am interested in doing a master's in Chemistry Education that combines some level of research with educational methods.

Women in STEM is still an underrepresented group of people, but chemistry is one of those majors where we can see more female figures compared to the other STEM fields. Do you think this is what you see on campus, and is this important to you?
Yeah, I mean, I haven't exactly counted, but sometimes I feel like it's majority female in many of my science classes, math classes being the exception. I took a lot of my math classes at community college, and it was really strange to be one of the two girls in a class of 30 people. So to see a lot of female students in class and being able to have female professors has been a huge thing, too. It’s hard to describe in words, but there's definitely something there psychologically and sociologically.

Well, I’ll look forward to the day you will also be an important figure to the girls in your classroom! Do you have any last words for our readers?
If there is a substance around you, you're looking at chemistry.