Square Root Academy empowers students with STEM education and opportunities

By Christine Shelby | OBSERVER Staff WriterNicholas Haystings, Executive Director of Square Root Academy, is dedicated to introducing kids to STEM. After noticing a lack of diversity in the industry, he co-founded Square Root Academy with three other black engineers. After starting with just five students in 2016, Square Root Academy has grown radically since serving an astonishing 5,000 students in 2020. Today, the organization serves more than 4,000 students with the same mission: to expose 5th through 12th grade students to the STEM skills needed to enter the field once they graduate high school.Haystings founded Square Root Academy because he hadn’t been exposed to STEM when he started in the mechanical engineering program at Sacramento State. As a South Sacramento native who attended Valley High, he didn’t have access to engineering programs and found it challenging to adjust to college. “I’m going in there from zero, you know,” he recalls. “And there’s a lot of kids actually dissuaded from that reality.” According to the 2024 Black Students and STEM Report, not having early exposure puts kids behind their peers. In addition, African-Americans only make up 9% of the STEM workforce in 2021, which is only up 2% since 2011....