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WEST VALLEY VIEW NEWS | JUNE 9, 2021
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Verrado junior melds entertainment, STEM BY ALEX GALLAGHER West Valley View Staff Writer
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errado High School junior Ben Doerksen has used his two interests to bridge the gap between entertainment and STEM — science, technology, engineering and math. Doerksen infused science and filmography into his work as a chief science officer. He helps create monthly YouTube videos for the Chief Science Officers International’s channel. In a recent segment, he showed how to make ice cream at home and explained the science behind it. “This takes the film creation thing that I like and combines it with the CSO program and STEM,” he said. “It’s something that I really enjoy doing.” CSOs are students in grades 6 to 12, who serve as STEM ambassadors and a liaison for STEM opportunities in their communities. Elected by their peers, CSOs are the voice for their fellow students, bringing STEM opportunities to their communities and change to their worlds.
Doerksen was one of the first students to join the chief science officer program when the Arizona SciTech Institute launched it in 2015. The program, which is now global, was created to make sure student voices were part of community conversations about STEM. He has presented to the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C., and met with its president for two hours behind closed doors. He emceed the STEMMY awards in May. Doerksen found out about the program through his fifth grade principal at Tartesso Elementary School. “My principal came into our classroom and asked who wanted to be a part of the Chief Science Leadership Program,” Doerksen said. “It was only the second year that the program had been around, and I didn’t know much about it.” Although he was unsure during the principal’s initial pitch, one word sparked Doerksen’s interest in the program — science. “I owe it to my parents, who have always encouraged me to be curious and interested in science, and the chief science officer has made me more interested in STEM-related fields,” Doerksen said. With the encouragement of his parents and a nomination by his peers, Doerksen has flourished in the organization. “We focus on STEM but also on leadership,” Doerksen said. “Part of that is implementing a STEM-related action plan into our community or our school.” “This allows us to gain leadership skills, like communicating to help make what we envision a reality,” he said. During his time with the Chief Science Leadership Program, Doerksen became interested in hardware engi-
neering, but his big dream is to become a film director. Doerksen compares the program to a TV news broadcast. “It reminds me of the news and how they have recurring stories and segments but then also have new things all the time,” Doerksen said. He helps plan “Perspective with CSO Cyra,” named after the channel’s founder. “We release a show once a month, but a lot of times we’ll create a promotional video that will come out before the episode airs,” Doerksen said. “We try to meet every Wednesday, and we sign up for segments we want to do. Though it can sometimes change and depending on how Verrado High School junior Ben Doerksen is a member of the Chief Science Leadership Program and Arizona busy or how free we are, we Leadership Council. He creates YouTube videos to procan take on extra segments or mote STEM. (Photo by Kelly Greene) ask other people to pick up our segments for us.” Doerksen also makes sure every epiEach show has a theme, the latest sode ends with ways for viewers to exof which was the correlation between perience STEM. STEM and sports. “We also have a challenge for our “We reached out to some of our viewers every month to do something partners, and one of them was STEM hands-on that’s STEM related,” DoSports, an organization that shows erksen said. the different math and science behind Though Doerksen has strong dreams sports.” Doerksen said. and goals of his own, he does hope to “We also highlighted many other as- encourage others to get involved in pects of how stem is incorporated into STEM and, if they can, with the CSO. sports. So, we showed things like how “I hope to help grow my CSO outgravity affects a ball and how the angle reach in my school as well as in my can affect a basketball shot.” community. I also want to help encourAs for his audience, Doerksen hopes age other CSOs across the state and people of all ages will enjoy the pro- implement my own action plans at my gram. school,” Doerksen said. “We gear this show toward families Looking forward, Doerksen hopes to who are interested in science, but we continue giving back to this program also encourage other CSOs to watch even after he graduates high school in the episodes as well, because we have 2023. a lot of chief science officers’ things “I look forward to becoming an ingrained into the videos,” Doerksen alumnus and helping out with the prosaid. gram in any way that I can.
