Stephanie Bale

First year student, University of Alberta

Former participant in the WISEST Summer Research Program
Like many young girls, as an elementary student Stephanie Bale was convinced it was the arts that she should like more than the sciences.

But by junior high, Stephanie knew she loved science. Then, in the summer prior to grade 12, she applied for and was awarded funding through Women in Scholarship, Engineering, Science & Technology (WISEST) to work in Dr. Jillian Buriak’s chemistry lab at the U of A. Here Stephanie was paired with graduate student Yuan Gao, who was studying the stability of gold nanoparticles.

 

Stephanie’s job was to make nanoparticles in different sizes and shapes and incubate them in simulated blood plasma so that Yuan could observe the reaction over time. Initially, she found the thought of working in a lab a bit daunting, as “research seems intimidating before you’ve done it,” she says. “I first thought it would be difficult coming into a lab where research is ongoing and everyone knows what they are doing.” Within a week, she was comfortable in her surroundings and with her fellow researchers. Six weeks later she was looking back and asking herself: “Wow, how did I ever do that?”

The experience offered by WISEST proved invaluable to Stephanie in other ways.

The organization sponsored additional summer activities to enhance work experience. Tours helped familiarize her with the campus and the university’s application and registration process, and visits to private company labs outside the university introduced her to research as practiced in a corporate environment.

“Experiences like WISEST shape you,” says Stephanie. In a short time, she had come to appreciate the importance of balancing the academic with the creative and the value of research and its contribution to science. The summer internship cemented Stephanie’s ambition to pursue science at university, even though her inclination had shifted from pursuing a career in research. She knows that other opportunities will present themselves while she’s engaged in her studies in immunology and infection at the University of Alberta, which she begins this fall.

Oh, and those lab skills she honed during the program? The last year of high school lab classes was a piece of cake

• Born in Edmonton
• Begins Speech Arts and discovers an interest in public speaking
• Grade 5 teacher sparks love of the sciences
• Travels to France with Grade 9 class
• Joins Interact, Ross Sheppard's Junior Rotary Club
• Attends WISEST Summer Research Program
• Travels to Europe with Grade 12 class
• Registers at the University of Alberta
• Still to come: Hopes to pursue a career combining love for communication and science