The popular party game Cards Against Humanity is teaming up with Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal Comics to help fund women who pursue higher education in STEM fields. In 2015, the card company connected with Phil Plait, a blogger for the magazine Slate, and Zach Weinersmith, the artist of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comics, to create the 30-card Science Pack expansion. Not only is this pack an alternative way to expand your game, but the company is donating all of the profits from the new pack to the Science Ambassador Scholarship. This scholarship is a full-ride scholarship for college women who are pursuing a degree in a science related field and are very passionate towards their field. At the time of this article was published, the scholarship has already raised $975,000 for undergraduate students.
This isn’t the first time the company has donated the profits of its packs to a worthy cause. Many of its other packs, including the Design pack, the Holidays packs, and the World Wide Web pack, raised money for many different causes. For example, the 2013, 2014, and 2015 Holiday packs have collectively raised $2.6 Million dollars towards education and public well-being. No one expects this from a company who sells a product that has the words, “Harry Potter Erotica,” written on it.
The people at Cards Against Humanity have spoken on the release of this pack, saying that they pursued their dream careers due to the higher education they received and want to make sure other people, especially women, get the opportunities to express themselves. Josh Dillon, a co-creator of Cards Against Humanity, has stated: “the underrepresentation of women in [STEM fields] are staggering,” and she hopes that with the amount of people who play the game, this will help diversify these fields and change the public perception of what a scientist is. Allowing young women to go after their dream, whether it is to become an astronaut or a mathematics teacher, is a large goak for women in technology-based majors and careers and hopefully sets an ongoing trend for generations to come. One of the members of the Science Ambassador Scholarship board, Doctor Veronica Berns, also stated, “I’m excited to tell a passionate girl out there, ‘Yes, what you are doing and dreaming is really great, and here’s some help to get you where you want to go.’”
If you are a woman looking into the fields of science, math, engineering or technology, this is a great opportunity. Around campus, not many know about it, but when told about the scholarship, many become interested with the easy entry and high payout. “The scholarship seems pretty cool,” McKenzy Rehfus, a first year forestry major, stated in an interview. However, she was concerned with the entry process. “Anyone can make a three minute video about something. Just because you are good at video editing doesn’t mean that you are the one who deserves the scholarship. It should be more about you and less about your skills in teaching and video editing.”
To apply for the scholarship, a woman must be in college in the fall of 2017 and create a three minute, non-personal mini-lecture about something in science that they are passionate about. The video must then be uploaded to Youtube and set to public. The videos will be judged by sixty women who hold high positions in many science fields. This includes representatives from NASA, TED, Harvard, and the Smithsonian. Scholarships like this will hopefully encourage other businesses to also donate to a scholarship or even create one of their own, like Buildium’s Women in Technology Scholarship. The video must be published by December 11, 2016. If you wish to donate to this scholarship, the Science Pack is available on the Cards Against Humanity website for $10. For more information, go to the Science Ambassador Scholarship website.
One Response
What a great article! Very informative! I can’t wait to share this information. Thank you for making me aware of the great work Cards Againd Humanity is doing to help young women with their educational goals! 🙂