Growing up in Englewood, Soyini Walton said she was directed into transcription and stenography classes while she watched her male peers walk around with slides and discuss algebra.
She always preferred science but said she wasn’t given the option to pursue it. At age 11, she remembers finding a dead bird and, out of curiosity, cutting it open with her dad’s razor.
“Nobody really said, Well, what are you passionate about? Because you probably could go into anything you want,” Walton said.
She worked as a teacher for years in her 20s before returning to Richard J. Daley and Kennedy-King colleges on the Southeast Side to enhance her math knowledge.
Now, almost 80, she sets an example teaching earth science and algebra classes at the Chicago Pre-College Science and Engineering Program, also known as ChiS&E, a nonprofit that offers enrichment classes on Saturdays and in the summer for historically underrepresented students to pique and motivate their interest in careers in science.
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