The 2009-10 Campus Action Project provided a platform to address some of the barriers girls and women face entering and staying in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields.
Twelve teams from around the country were selected to implement projects based on recommendations from AAUW's upcoming 2010 research report, Why So Few? Women and Girls in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. The selected teams engage in mentoring with girls ages K-12, round-tables and lectures for current college science, technology, engineering, and mathematics students, and professional development and networking opportunities for girls and women of all ages.
CSI: California, PA, Engaging and Inspiring Girls to Explore Their World
California University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania
The AAUW Campus Action Project team at the California University of Pennsylvania will use a two-tier mentoring model to facilitate mentoring relationships between current science, technology, engineering, and math undergraduate students and female faculty and between current science, technology, engineering, and mathematics undergraduate students and local middle school girls. The mentoring programs will focus on two after-school events for the middle school and college students, which will highlight science, technology, engineering, and mathematics topics through hands-on activities. Faculty members will help the college students plan and carry out the events and meet with them as part of a mentoring relationship. Later in the semester, the middle school students and their parents will come to the college campus for a culminating event.
Opportunities in STEM Fields and the Opportunities Clinic Program
The Claremont Colleges, California
The AAUW CAP team at the Claremont Colleges is using an existing engineering clinic program as a model to work in teams of two to mentor groups of five female high school students. Each group will focus on a specific science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields-related problem. The three teams will each design a small-scale clinic to address a student-identified need either in the high school or in the local community. The clinic teams will meet one afternoon each week for two-and-a-half hours over the course of 10 weeks. The clinic projects will culminate in two capstone events, at which the teams will present their clinic projects and the undergraduate mentors will discuss their research. Faculty and local scientists will also discuss their work. To facilitate networking and increase awareness of the event, a prominent woman in a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics field will give a keynote speech at the events.
Women in Science and Technology
Dakota State University, South Dakota
The Dakota State University AAUW CAP team will increase awareness of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics among K–12 and college students and provide networking and leadership opportunities for college students in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. The team will hold four two-and-a-half hour workshops for college, middle, and high school students (30 students per workshop) on science, math, and computer and information technology at the local Homestake Mine. The team will produce and distribute a brochure on potential careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields and have a booth about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers at the Women in Science Career Day event in March, which up to 300 middle school students will attend. Additionally, up to 10 CAP team students will mentor approximately 100 K–12 students in a science-focused design challenge.
Beyond Health Care: Moving Women into Nontraditional STEM Careers
Massasoit Community College, Massachusetts
The Massasoit Community College AAUW CAP team’s project meets a specific need on their campus. Every spring, the college accepts only 160 students out of approximately 1,000 applicants to its nursing and allied health programs. Hundreds of students—mostly female, and many of whom have taken science and math courses in preparation for studying nursing, radiological technology, or respiratory therapy—feel they have no career alternative. To address this problem, the Massasoit team will increase awareness among these students of alternative science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers by preparing informative bulletin boards and holding a STEM career day and panel discussion of women employed in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers. Faculty in STEM disciplines will attend and participate in the panel and resulting discussions.
Roundtable Mentoring and Student Retention: What Women Need to Know to Survive and Succeed in STEM Careers
University of Mississippi-Oxford, Mississippi
The AAUW CAP team at the University of Mississippi is working to improve retention of female students in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines. They will hold monthly round-table discussions for 100 female science, technology, engineering, and mathematics students. The team hopes to enhance camaraderie among female science, technology, engineering, and mathematics students, provide informal mentoring between faculty and students, and facilitate discussion of the difficult, often under-discussed issues that may preclude a student from remaining in a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics discipline. The topics of the round tables will include “Women in STEM,” “Career options in STEM,” “Career Versus Home: A False Dichotomy?,” “Does Gender Bias in the Workplace Exist?,” and “Questions You Hesitate to Ask, But Want To.” To encourage attendance, the team will provide dinner, and attendees will have the chance to network with students and STEM faculty.
Women Inspiring Learning (Momentum)
North Carolina Central University, North Carolina
The AAUW CAP team at North Carolina Central University will expose middle school girls to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields and careers through an extended mentoring program. Selected students will come to the university campus six Saturdays in the spring to work with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics college students, and five science professionals will mentor a larger cohort of middle school girls. In addition to mentoring time, seminars, and hands-on-activities during the Saturday sessions, the girls will go on field trips to local science, technology, engineering, and mathematics sites for real-world exposure.
EMPOWER: Engineering Technology Mentoring and Professional Skills Workshops for Enhanced Retention
Rochester Institute of Technology, New York
The AAUW CAP team at at Rochester Institute of Technology is implementing an EMPOWER program, a series of workshops for 50 female engineering technology students. The workshops will focus on networking effectively, developing a professional portfolio, and dressing for success. Participants will tour local engineering facilities to promote a fuller understanding of the profession and to give students an opportunity to network with professionals in the field. Students will have the opportunity to use the skills they have acquired through the workshops at a final event, where they will network with professional women working in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines.
Strengthening the Chain: Using Women’s Social Networks to Encourage Nontraditional Students in Engineering
University of Alabama, Huntsville, Alabama
The University of Alabama, Huntsville, AAUW CAP team’s goal is to recruit and retain nontraditional women engineering students. The team will hold four monthly sessions on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics for current and prospective students where science, technology, engineering, and mathematics professionals, students, and faculty will present on panels and lead group discussions. Students will be encouraged to invite a friend to each new session. Current science, technology, engineering, and mathematics students will disseminate resource materials on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to their social networks and communities, and they will create innovative digital and print media on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics with practical information for nontraditional students returning to college. At an April expo, the team will host a booth and highlight innovative ways that STEM fields effect social change and the socially beneficial applications of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines.
WISTEM for Girls
University of California, Davis, California
The University of California, Davis, AAUW CAP team will hold a series of events focused on demystifying computers and electronic devices for 10- to 13-year-old girls. There will be four Saturday workshops for six to eight girls and their CAP team mentors on topics such as computer hardware and software, semiconductors, electronics, the history of computers, and girls and technology. Mentors will also take the girls on lab field trips and campus tours. In April, 35 to 50 girls will come to the campus to participate in demonstrations led by girls their age and CAP team members (faculty and students) on computers and electronics. Finally, the CAP team will create an online social networking group for the girls who attended the workshops and campus event, allowing the CAP team members to continue mentoring relationships online.
Portrait of a Scientist as a Young Woman
University of Guam, Guam
The University of Guam AAUW CAP team is focusing on the obstacles women in Guam face when they choose to study science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields by producing a short film for female students in high school and at the University of Guam and their parents on the topic. They hope to foster dialogue about the value of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics programs for women. Faculty-supervised student teams will write vignettes and film interview clips with female professionals working in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. The team will also hold an island-wide science, technology, engineering, and mathematics poster competition. The CAP team expects the project to bring together high school science teachers and UOG professors as they promote science, technology, engineering, and mathematics subjects for women.
STEM Intervention
Mississippi University for Women-Columbus, Mississippi
The AAUW CAP team at Mississippi University will teach science, technology, engineering, and mathematics lessons to a local fifth grade class during the spring semester. The team hopes to change the attitudes of students toward science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers and toward women’s ability to work in them. They will administer pre- and post-course tests to track success. If the classes go well, the team hopes to expand the program and teach more than one class next school year. Visit the team website.
Girls STEM Summit
University of South Florida, Sarasota-Manatee Campus, Florida
The University of South Florida AAUW CAP team will host 200 girls in grades five through nine on campus for a day-long science, technology, engineering, and mathematics summit. Lectures and hands-on activities will focus on topics such as engineering, marine biology, mathematics, information technology, medicine, and archaeology. There will be opportunities for girls to hear from and talk to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics college students, alumnae, faculty, and local female leaders in these fields. There will also be a special workshop for parents about how to support their daughters in pursuing a STEM career. Visit the team website.
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