“You cannot be what you cannot see, and for me, I didn’t know there was anything other than going to college after you graduated from high school,” Khan said.
“So I asked myself the question, ‘How do I make more opportunities for Black and brown students, especially girls, to engage with STEM and to understand that anything is possible?’” Khan said. “I want all of our students to see college as not just a destination, but part of the journey and a path to the rest of their life.”
Unlike Khan, recent Epic graduate Sabine Ramirez will be a first-generation college student when she arrives at Purdue University in the fall on a full-ride academic scholarship.
As one of eight children growing up in a Latino family in the Hegewisch neighborhood on the city’s Far South Side, Ramirez recalled being one of the few girls enrolled in her first STEM class, which was being…