[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by Littleswimmer14

I think the HOW would be an excellent thing to talk about and brainstorm on.

In 2011 I experienced three different problems relating to Females getting involved with Engineering:

1. I had a student who felt that she had to fight harder then the boys on the team to have her voice be heard when discussing the 2011 robot design and who had no female engineering mentor on her team. She had a hard time feeling confident on the team.

2. I was talking with two girls who were doing a video project, and I asked them what they were majoring in (sadly I was already expecting them to say they wanted to major in communications or multi-media). One said they wanted to go into a medical field and one wanted to get involved with electrical engineering. When I asked what part of the team they were a part of they said the communications side.

3. I was talking to another mentor who had been trying to get females from a large engineering company to come in and talk to their students about being a women in STEM and they couldn't find ANY women who would be willing to take the time and talk with these girls.


Because of these experiences I felt that some ways of encouraging more girls to get involved with STEM could be:

A. Working to raise girls confidence levels when working with STEM

B. Encourage more female engineers to become involved with STEM


I haven't quite figured out HOW to create a program that works on raising girls confidence levels when working with STEM so if people have ideas on projects, programs, or events that focus on building that up, that would be great.


For encouraging more female engineers to become involved with STEM:

1. I've contacted the local College Chapter of Society of Women Engineers (SWE) and requested to have a breakout session at their Regional Conference in February 2013 to talk about FIRST.

2. For the conference I've been working on gathering video interviews of Female Engineering mentors and students in FIRST who are talking about WHY they mentor, and what they get out of it, and why other women should consider becoming a mentor to the program. I'm hoping that the video will allow me to actually show the members of SWE how important their mentoring could be and encourage them to get involved.

Video has been taken at champs for this, and I'm going to be at IRI working on this as well. PM me if you know anyone who should be interviewed and will be at IRI or would be interested in this.

3. Creating a marketing campaign to get more female judges from companies who support FIRST at regional events (This is in progress).


Does anyone have other ideas for HOW to encourage more girls to go into STEM, HOW to build up their confidence, and HOW to get more female engineering mentors involved?

Renee

IMHO you hit the nail on the head. Nice post.