By Katelynn Luu
Seniors Audrey Tran and Jasmine Nguyen, like many other students on Fountain Valley High School’s campus, love learning about science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM). Their passion for STEAM has led them to do a lot of things, from taking challenging classes in the STEAM field to getting involved with STEAM-related extracurricular activities.
One STEAM-related activity Tran and Nguyen competed in was the High School Academic Research Competition, where they found out about STEAM News from a fellow competitor.
“STEAM News is an online newspaper where students can sign up to write articles about any topic in STEAM that they’re interested [in],” Tran said. “We write about new innovations in STEAM, current developments or we sometimes write about the past and how that has [impacted us now].”
Inspired by this opportunity to be published writers for STEAM News, Tran and Nguyen researched and wrote about topics that they were interested in.
“In school, if we’re asked to write an article or anything, it kind of seems like a drag and a chore,” Nguyen said. “But then when you get to choose to research an article on your own, it’s a lot more fun since you get to choose what you want to learn.”
After a few months as writers, Tran approached Nguyen with the idea of starting their own chapter of STEAM News in Orange County to localize the global newspaper and have more writers in closer proximity.
“In the beginning, we had a hard time trying to find writers who are interested in our organization and writing for us,” Nguyen said. “Within the past couple of months, we’ve become a lot more comfortable with reaching out to people and exploring new opportunities.”
To run the Orange County chapter, Tran and Nguyen design articles for social media, edit articles and contact writers to write articles — all while writing articles themselves.
Currently, they are focused on expanding the program to recruit writers from different high schools in Orange County by reaching out to friends through social media and attending events such as the Orange County Fair.
“Our platform is completely for readers, too,” Nguyen said. “You don’t have to write; just come and read our articles.”
