Alexis Bunnell is a passionate and change inciting young woman in STEM. As a high schooler, she pushed the barriers within her school and community, earning respect from her peers and teachers as well as a numerous amount of recognitions. In college, she further developed her skill in research and science related pursuits.
As a highschooler, Alexis’ passion for scientific research was recognized at the Twin Cities Regional Science Fair where her project on the effect of social media usage by teens on their sleep and academics was selected to advance to State level competition. One of the most impressive things about Alexis’ project was her learning how to complete a chi square analysis to determine the statistical significance of her data. Her project and paper on teen social media addiction won the Behavioral American Psychological Association Award and advanced further into the state competition with. Read her paper here.
She also participated in the American Heart Associations Advancing the Sciences event with the Women in STEM club, to help raise STEM funds for Burnsville High School. She won the National Center for Women in Information Technology Aspiration Rising Star Award. Rising Stars show aptitude to succeed in computer science. She was one of the few sophomores to receive this distinction.
As a junior, in her advanced research writing course, she chose to research how schools could close the gender gap in STEM programs. Alexis chose a topic that is so important to her as a woman in STEM, and her solution to this problem was unique, creative, and relatively easy to accomplish. When a district administrator heard of her research, they worked with Alexis to actually implement this solution in Burnsville High School classrooms. Read about her work here.
She won the reputable Target Twist EPIC Award that recognized a young woman that demonstrates engagement, passion, innovation, and curiosity within STEM fields. She also earned the National Center for Women in Information Technology Aspiration Regional Affiliate Award for students who have significantly demonstrated interest and aptitude for computing.
As a senior, Alexis has showed commitment to providing feed back to the National Science Foundation as a beta student through her class participation in the AP Computer Science Principles class last year and also created a video to share with all the Marketing, Business, Information Technology instructors in Minnesota this summer.
Alexis Bunnell actively works to encourage more students, especially young girls, to develop a passion for computer science and STEM. She has recruited women at the high school to be part of NCWIT (National Center for Women and Information Technology) and led a group in the Technovation Challenge at her school.
Alexis also combined two of her strongest assets – her organization skill set and deep empathy for others to be a major organizer during an district wide “hour of code”. Hundreds of students and family members participated in this successful event. Alexis also created a summer STEM/CS camp for junior high girls in the school district called “Chick Click” Summer Camp but was put on hold because of the COVID 19 epidemic.
Alexis Bunnell 