About me

Hello! My name is Amanda Montague. 

Ever since I was a little girl, I have wanted to be a physicist but the culture I grew up in taught me that women should be in the home. 

When I was in high school, I asked to take physics, but my counselor refused to enroll me in the class. Even though I met the requirements for the class, he told me physics was too hard and made me pick an easier class. I didn’t dare take physics again until my third year of college, then four years later I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in physics. 

At the time of my graduation, pressure from my culture was weighing heavily on me and I felt compelled to walk away from my dream of being a physicist in order to become a stay-at-home mom.

The roadblocks I experienced in science due to the culture I grew up in were too much for me to overcome. I hope my work creates a pathway to science that doesn’t require women, or people from other diverse groups, to overcome their culture in order to do science. 

I developed this approach for my younger self so she could gain scientific confidence outside of school.

I graduated from Weber State University with a Master of Education in 2023. For my thesis project I explored inequality in science education. Many roadblocks were identified as well as tactics scientists have found helpful in circumventing those roadblocks. I put these two things together to create a framework for a science curriculum aimed at reducing inequality.

 RESTRUCTURING CULTURAL NORMS IN SCIENCE: AN INFORMAL SCIENCE CURRICULUM by Amanda Montague.