QT STEM: Promoting LGBTQ+ Visibility & Acceptance in STEM
As a student at Irvine Valley College, Derek Yazan served as vice president of the Gender Sexuality Alliance. “I really loved organizing and creating a space for queer people on campus.” So, when Yazan transferred to UC Irvine a year ago, he searched for a similar community. “I was looking online, and I found the Discord page for QT STEM,” he says.
QT STEM is a student organization that serves as a safe space for queer and/or trans people studying a STEM field at UCI. “They were looking for people to join the board, so I volunteered immediately,” says Yazan, now a computer science major in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS). “I thought it was really cool to already have a board position and a great way to start my time here at UCI.”
Founded in 2018, QT STEM meets weekly in UCI’s LGBT Resource Center for fun social activities and discussions on topics relevant to queerness and science. At recent meetings, members made DNA-celets (matching “DNA” friendship bracelets) and built pasta and marshmallow mountains, and they discussed research and queer role models in STEM.
“It’s important not to just have educational discussions but also a space to have fun,” says Yazan, a senior who now serves as QT STEM president, working closely with earth system science major Alexandria Robertson and math major Karl Zieber to plan meetings that build a sense of community. “Creating these connections of queer people in STEM really provides emotional support, as a lot of the discussions we have are about the difficulties of existing as a queer person in our fields.”
Studies have highlighted the continued “exclusion of queer individuals in STEM fields.” Yet as Jon Freeman has noted, “the welfare of LGBTQ+ people in STEM is not only a moral imperative, but also in our global interest.” He cites as one example how two openly LGBTQ+ scientists — the chemist Carolyn Bertozzi and the geneticist Svante Pääbo — won Nobel Prizes in 2022 for discoveries that have paved the way for life-saving treatments and groundbreaking technologies.
Such role models give students like Yazan hope, which is why QT STEM also hosts guest speakers, including UCI faculty and grad students. “The purpose of having these guest speakers from UCI is to inspire students and to help them realize that we as a group can exist in academia,” says Yazan. “It can feel like you stand out or you’re different from everyone else. Just last week we were discussing the importance of visibility, because it highlights others who were able to make it through this difficult journey, giving us hope that one day we could do the same.”
Yazan encourages fellow students to attend a QT STEM meeting. “I definitely recommend checking it out. It’s a place for queer people to meet each other and build this really strong community, even if you’re not in STEM,” he says. Consider joining tonight (Thursday, November 7), where the discussion will focus on promoting your queerness to employers. Or join in on November 21 for the Bob Ross painting social. “That one is usually really popular,” says Yazan, who hopes to continue building this sense of community in industry after graduating in June 2025. “I strive to be someone who can help bring queer people together, in a future company or even just in the community.”
For more information, follow QT STEM on Instagram or Discord or email qtstemuci@gmail.com.
— Shani Murray