By Kimberly Mitchell
When Filomena Nunes began teaching in the Physics Department at Michigan State University, she noticed many of her female students hitting a wall as they pursued degrees in STEM subjects, particularly in physics. Nunes knew the issues women face pursuing STEM degrees—bias, harassment, exclusion, imposter syndrome, lack of mentoring—the list goes on. As she watched her students struggle through the same issues Nunes faced as a student while obtaining her degree in physics and doctorate in nuclear physics, she realized she had to act.
“This was bigger than physics,” Nunes said. She decided to create a course to teach female students how to overcome common issues Nunes often saw students struggling with at the beginning of a STEM career. Nunes devoted a summer to researching and crafting the course, calling it “a major endeavor.” She looked for outside resources and began with the book Success Strategies from Women in STEM by Peggy Pritchard and Christine Grant.
The course, titled Tools for Women in STEM, began in 2019 at Michigan State. Nunes enjoys teaching this course in person, as she says one of the biggest takeaways she sees is how the students bond over shared conversations in class. Nunes first has students look outward at the stats and research to ensure everyone understands the current landscape of women in STEM, including current research and stats, and differential treatment. Then, students look inward to examine their own experiences, beginning with shame triggers and biases. Nunes leans on the work of Brené Brown, renowned for her writing on shame, courage, and vulnerability. Nunes admits that to take the course, students will have moments of vulnerability as they confront their own implicit biases to understand their starting points within their STEM paths.
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| Students from Tools for Women in STEM. Photo: Michigan State University |
She also coaches students through a common belief that the student is wasting the mentor’s time by asking for mentoring. She teaches students how to create common expectations between student and mentor. These expectations must be “rooted in reality, not in expectations that aren’t matched.” Just starting these conversations allows students and mentors to understand each other better. Nunes also covers how to receive mentor feedback in her class. “It’s important you use your feedback. Are you willing to receive it?”
“One thing I stress,” Nunes says about the students, is that “they are in charge. The mentee is in charge.” This flips the assumption that the mentor is the one in charge and the one who must be proactive. Instead, proactivity falls on the student, and Nunes teaches her students how to be proactive.
The mentoring aspect of the course has been so successful, three students who connected through the course decided to put together a mentoring program within a different department at Michigan State. The students lobbied the department chair, won approval, and the mentoring program is still going strong.
“It’s definitely not about me,” Nunes says about the course. “It’s about this space I create through the course to make these connections.”
Nunes continues to teach the course each year and hopes others might be interested in teaching it as well at their own institutions. Meanwhile, she also continues her own research and is currently interested in the merging of statistics and nuclear physics, an interest gained through working with a student who wanted to focus on the topic for her thesis. “I was willing to embark together and learn together,” Nunes says.
Nunes brings that attitude—to embark and learn together—to her students as they journey through “Tools for Women in STEM.” The next course will be held in person at Michigan State during the Spring 2026 semester.
To learn more about Tools for Women in STEM and about Filomena Nunes’ work, visit fimmnunes.wixsite.com.
