A gifted 12-year-old in the United States is making waves as a college student with plans to work as a NASA engineer. Alena Wicker, who lives in Texas, has been accepted to Arizona State University this May after she graduated from high school. There, she is double majoring in astronomical and planetary science and chemistry to further her dream of working at NASA as an engineer. It’s a dream she intends to make a reality, and one that she’s had ever since she was little, Wicker told “Good Morning America.” Originally, she said, she wanted to be an astronomer, but then she decided to switch over to engineering because of her love of building things. “I would love to build a rover to go to space,” Wicker said. It all started with Legos Everything, from Wicker’s passion for building to her current aspirations, can be traced back to one main thing: Legos. “Ever since I was 4, I loved playing around with different types of Legos,” Wicker said. It was then that her mom, Daphne McQuarter, knew she was gifted. “She would organize the Legos by color, by size,” McQuarter said. “She was always strategic with her Legos, and if you messed up her Legos, it was a whole problem. If you took one of her Legos out of the little set, she knew that one of her Legos were missing.” Recently, Wicker has built the Taj Mahal, the Disney castle, the Millennium Falcon, the Apollo 11 rover and a NASA rocket. “I can’t pick a favorite, but if I could ... it would be the Millennium Falcon,” she admitted, adding that she’s a “Star Wars” fan whose favorite movie is “Episode III: Revenge of the Sith” and favorite character is Princess Leia. Mastermind of BSG plan Wicker noticed the racial and gender disparities in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields and decided to do something about it. She launched her own website, the Brown Stem Girl (BSG), to provide an outlet for girls of color in STEM. Women make up half of all United States workers in STEM positions, but that statistic comes from the fact that they account for the majority of health care workers, according to the Pew Research Center. They’re largely underrepresented in other fields such as computer jobs and engineering. The center also found that Black people only make up 9 percent of STEM workers, with that number dropping to 7 percent for Hispanic people. “She said, ‘Mom, I want to create this culture of Brown girls in STEM, because it’s this whole gap, and I just want to do something,’” McQuarter said of her daughter’s motivation. Wicker came up with the entire business plan for BSG on her own and contacted people who could assist with various aspects of its creation, her mom said. From graphic designers to larger funding requests and public relations, it was all her. A bigger picture In addition to college, her career goals and BSG, Wicker is learning Spanish and Arabic. A big thing that both mom and daughter are keen on is experiences, they said, and they love to travel as a result. Wicker has even done world schooling while living abroad in Amman, Jordan. One of Wicker’s next projects is a children’s book titled “Brainiac World.” The name comes from what kids teased her with when she was younger, and she said it’s her way of taking the word back and making it into something positive. She’s also working on a podcast. “My podcast is to encourage girls in STEM by bringing other women and girls of STEM to ask and answer questions,” Wicker said. One of the people she hopes to speak to on her podcast is Dr. Mae Jemison — who made history as the first Black female astronaut — to “see her view of what it was like” going to space. Of other future plans, both Wicker and McQuarter said they can’t reveal too much, but they did tease that Wicker has been contacted by NASA. Wicker acknowledged that the journey she’s on is challenging, but she is excited nonetheless. “All my life, people are trying to hold me down because of my age,” she said. The advice she’d give to other people like her she attributes to what a postal worker once told her: “We’re in a new year, in a new season, and no one can hold us down anymore. So you can keep your feet on the ground, but you can continue to reach for the stars.” (SD-Agencies) | 