Many of the 36 projects featured in ATE Impacts 2024-2025 are testing strategies to recruit and retain populations historically underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and math fields. Today’s blog highlights the work of three projects that focus on encouraging women and adolescent girls to embark on advanced technology careers.
“We decided to focus our projects on recruiting females and non-binary students for STEM-related educational programs to increase gender equality and overall diversity in conventionally male-dominated careers. Traditionally, female students were not encouraged to excel in math and science, which limited their access to careers that utilize these skills. Today, STEM-related careers are some of the fastest growing and highest paid jobs and our programs seek to recruit females into these academic programs,” Jacequeline I. Mitchell, director of the Business and Entrepreneurship Career Pathway at Durham Technical Community College, wrote in an email. She is principal investigator of the Power of Us: Increasing Female Enrollment and Retention in Career and Technical Education Programs at the Durham, NC, college. Power of Us offers a speaker series, female mentors, and week-long summer camps.
The Advanced Manufacturing: Girls Can, Too! Project at Bluegrass Community and Technical College (BCTC) in Georgetown, KY, is driven by these data: “70% of all high school dual credit students are female, however, only 7% of those are taking industrial maintenance courses. Meanwhile, only 12% of maintenance workers are female and 70% of maintenance workers are over 40.” Hannah Green, co-principal investigator, and Shelby Cox, administrative assistant, provided the data and reported that the project is beginning to see changes. “We have had some students enrolled in dual credit courses through their high schools, as well as some students from the Girls Can, Too! program that enrolled full time in BCTC last fall. We have found that female students excel in the courses, and we feel like we are on the right path in bridging the gender gap,” they wrote in an email.
ATE Impacts 2024-2025 will be released this spring. It is part of an Advanced Technological Education project led by the Internet Scout Research Group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with funding from the National Science Foundation. Keep reading for more excerpts from the book and insights about effective recruitment strategies from the project teams.