Mokena’s Danielle Santoro gets a STEM studies boost
While her classmates were reading about comic book heroes, magical worlds and fast-paced thrillers, Lincoln-Way Central senior Danielle Santoro was reading National Geographic for Kids.
Today, you’ll read about how this Mokena resident recently received a $5,000 Girls With Heart scholarship from the American Heart Association for her strong academic performance and leadership skills and intent to major in a science, technology, engineering or math-related field in college.
“When I was younger some of my favorite books were about diseases and plagues,” she said. “I’ve been interested in science since I was very little.”
Santoro received the scholarship opportunity after attending the Chicago American Heart Association’s Go Red Goes Stem event last fall. The program was designed to inspire and empower high school girls to explore careers in STEM fields and to become future leaders in the fight against heart disease and stroke.
“Some of my friends in other classes told me about this event that we could sign up for and I wasn’t in that particular class so I had to ask a teacher to join,” she said. “I got to talk to a lot of other women in STEM and it was eye-opening to talk to these women and to learn how they are treated in STEM. It was really cool to talk to them and they told me to sign up for the scholarship so I applied for it and kind of forgot about it.”
Seemingly out of nowhere this spring, an email arrived in Santoro’s inbox announcing she had won the scholarship.
“I didn’t think I was getting it, so I was super excited,” she said. “I was invited to go to a Go Red For Women event in mid-March and went with my mom and that was a cool experience.”
Santoro will make her way down to Champaign later this year to begin college at the University of Illinois to study biomedical engineering.
“Several schools I visited have their engineering campus separate from it, which I thought was weird,” she said. “It’s an intermixed campus right there (in Champaign). I visited again in early April and did an engineering tour when students were there and it was super cool to walk the campus.”
While Santoro’s interest in genetics really has never waned, she recognized that becoming a doctor wasn’t a direction she wanted to take, although she certainly can complement the medical field in helping others through her future engineering endeavors.
“My grandfather’s macular degeneration got me interested in learning more about genetics and I never thought I could pursue that,” she said. “I didn’t want to become a doctor because that’s too much school for me, but earlier this year I saw a TikTok about some weird medicine that I watched a documentary on and it brought me back to what I want to do in my life. I want to go into some sort of engineering and I think genetics and tissue engineering and stem cells is where I want to go.”
The American Heart Association most definitely is hoping that by advocating for young women like Santoro to pursue careers in STEM that the numbers of women working in the field will increase.
While heart disease remains the number one killer of women, far fewer women than men are at the forefront of developing science and engineering solutions. According to the AHA, out of every 100 female undergrads, only 12 will graduate with a degree in STEM and only three will continue on to work in STEM fields. Although women fill close to half of all jobs in the U.S. economy, they hold less than 25% of STEM jobs.
“STEM was something I was hesitant to go into, especially this year after I signed up for several AP classes,” she said. “In those classes of about 25 students there are only five girls so it was eye-opening and I’m not even in college or my engineering field yet. I’m still the minority in these classes, but all the teachers are supper supportive of everyone and all the girls support each other. Even though there may not be a lot of women in this field, that small community we have is really supportive.”
Being supportive has become her own M.O. on the girls soccer sidelines as a broken ankle during the offseason saw her transition from player to team manager for a 17-1 Knights squad that has only yielded three goals all season.
While she’d love to be able to suit up and contribute on the field, she’s found comfort in her team manager role as well as all her interests that keep her busy in addition to her high-level academic achievements.
“I’m still a part of soccer for my senior year and I’m on Student Council and the executive board,” she said. “And I’ve done journalism for four years, doing food reviews like Starbucks versus Dunkin’ and I used to work at Oberweis so I ranked the items on their menu. And I’ve been involved in a lot of other things.”
She’s a busy one, for sure, with a really bright future and you don’t have to work in STEM to see that.