Request for data on impact of FIRST for Women in Technology

FIRST General Forum
1

I have been asked to participate in a Women In Technology panel discussion on “Energizing the Next Generation” as a result of my participation as a mentor in FIRST FRC over the last 14 years. It would be nice to show up prepared with real data on the impact of programs such as the ones from FIRST.

Does anyone have or know of any data collected on the FIRST programs showing participation rates, college attendance, or other metrics over the last few years to show the impact of these programs? If the data had a break out by gender that would be good but not required.

Perhaps someone can point me to the right person at FIRST who might have such information already assembled.

As a mentor my focus has been on inspiring the next generation independent of gender. Although, over the yeas there has been some focus on encouraging different communication styles as impacted by gender. For instance, teaching the students how to seek deeper understanding of other’s points of view before making their own points and suggestions. Additionally, the use of the Socratic method to help others understand your points and concerns instead of using words that would put others on the defensive instead of collaborative approaches. And how to be aware when you may be trying to make your point through assertiveness and dominance instead of clear concise and factual communication.

So I will put this out to this group:

What has your team done to inspire women in technology?
What are the benefits and drawbacks to female only teams?
What actions have you taken to increases communication based on gender differences and what was the impact?
What challenges have come arisen on your teams do to gender, how did you deal with them and what were the results?

In short what experiences have you and your team had that the attendees to a panel discussion on Women in Technology - Energizing The Next Generation be interested in?

Thanks in advance,
Joshua Lynn
Engineering Mentor
Team 423 - Simple Machines
Wyncote, PA

2

Brandeis studies

3

Joshua,
Ceal Craig has been working on just the data you are looking for.
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/member.php?u=11053
I would PM her and ask the question.

4

I would recommend studying this paper, for a start.

http://www.kellrobotics.org/pdf/EWE.pdf

Way back in 2007 our team gave a presentation at FIRST Conferences.

http://first.wpi.edu/Workshops/2008CON.html

The notes are here: http://first.wpi.edu/Images/CMS/First/2008CON_Women_In_Engineering_Notes_1311.doc

The slides are here: http://first.wpi.edu/Images/CMS/First/2008CON_Women_In_Engineering_1311.ppt

You have to get ‘messages’ right. Why engineering is important to our lives !! Energy, security, healthcare, transportation, etc. Surgical robots are not hobby rc things. They are important to improve the quality of healthcare.

The activities the team engages in, during and after the season sends messages to everyone including young women. You want students ( including girls ) to experience engineering as a fun and interesting experience. They need to be shown that it is REALLY important too !. A few months ago our team got to operate a $ 2,000,000 tandem DaVinci Surgical robot. We spent time with an OB-GYN and discusses how this robot is dramatically changing healthcare, especially for women.

The lecture above and the EWE paper discusses how grown women and high school girls are often disconnected when having career discussions. The first thing many girls want to know is what life is like as an engineer. If you ask a grown woman what they do, they will likely give you a resume, hence the disconnect.

On average, teenage boys and girls approach risk differently. On average, a boy will take a risk in order to not let others think that he doesn’t know how to do something. On average, girls tend to hold back a little more and say “I don’t know how to do …”.

By the time students reach high school they have learned that it isn’t good to take a risk or show that you don’t know something. You have to teach students how to take creative acceptable risks, that it is ok not to know the answers, and that together, we will make progress.
An interesting talk on creativity, from TED http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

Mentors can play a big role in this process, both male and female mentors. They are role models and they can serve as effective facilitators in engaging students to work as a team and to allow others to participate in the risks of maybe doing or saying something ‘dumb’. Don’t call it dumb, call it creative !!

About 5 or 6 years ago the students created an online magazine that tried to send messages about engineering: http://www.kellrobotics.org/pdf/Magazine.pdf

Literally about an hour ago I discovered this website: http://www.engineeringmessages.org/ Imagine that. Changing the conversation. I have not had a chance to review the site. Hopefully it is good.

Our team is about half girls. Has been for 6 years. About half the girls that come in go on to engineering careers. And they had no prior inclination to do so.

Several times I have heard students talking, especially girls talking about how engineering and what they are working toward “is really important”. That is a nice thing to hear.

5

Thank you all for the quick replies and information, very helpful stuff. It should have been obvious that the FIRST community would be the best place to start.

Unfortunately the information is needed almost immediately since the panel discussion is on Saturday.

Even so it is an area of interest to me so I may pursue the data and people’s findings further if for no other reason to strengthen our own team. My working hypothesis is that we want to work with bright and talented people, albeit with possibility some guidance and mentoring may be needed. Since there is absolutely no reason to think that young women can’t be bright and talented, yet they are statistically underrepresented on our team as well as in engineering, one can only conclude there is an untapped resource pool that could be of benefit to all.

6

From the EWE research above:
“Why are academically prepared girls not considering or enrolling in engineering degree programs?” We know the issue is not one of ability or preparation.

Good place to start.

7

I’ll throw in my “two cents” here, having worked with an all-girls team for 6 years now. The team comes from a private all-girls catholic high school, and the students are all incredibly bright, motivated and involved. That presents our first problem, as a team: students are involved in so much other “stuff” that they often can’t fit robotics into their after school schedule. As a result, out team remains at about 20 members every year, and hasn’t been able to grow (I know for a fact of at least several interested students in every grade that don’t join because of other commitments).

When the students come in, they don’t know anything about building a robot. It’s not an exaggeration to say we have to teach them how to hold and use a drill, and go through every item in our tool box. Once we get past that initial learning curve, I’d put my students up against any other students in FIRST for capability though.

But, that learning curve is steep. As a kid, I followed my dad around when he did projects around the house. For fathers day when I was 10, my grandfather and I built my dad a new work bench, complete with shelving and cabinets. In cub scouts, I built pinewood derby cars, bird houses, and the like. I played with Lego’s. I build model airplanes and model cars. In short, I grew up building things and working with my hands.

On the flip side, my sister grew up playing with dolls (not to use a stereo type, but its true). She was in girl scouts, but that focused on selling cookies and arts and crafts. She didn’t build anything. She wasn’t hands on, and didn’t know how to use a drill.

There’s a cultural image we all share of what a girl is “supposed” to be like growing up, and what a boy is “supposed” to be like growing up. That image is changing, but it doesn’t happen over night. How do you combat and change that cultural bias?

Looking at two backgrounds that are so extremely different in this area, how do you interest both in robotics? How do you overcome the the fear one might have of not knowing what to do? How do you give girls the confidence that they’ll catch on quickly and soon surpass the abilities of the boys on their team?

When you do get girls to show up, how do you put them on a level playing field with guys that have so much more experience, just from growing up in our current culture? How do you spend the time bringing a student who doesn’t know the tools up to speed, without completely boring the student who does?

When you have an environment with such drastic background differences as these, you end up with the “more experienced” group running the show and naturally pushing the less experienced back in order to “get things done on time”. It’s mostly not something that’s done consciously, or something that is necessarily all that obvious. But when you have two people standing at the robot and one knows what needs to be done and how to do it based on previous experience and the other doesn’t, one will just start working while the other stands there and watches. Add to that a gender difference and the normal hormones of high school students, and it can be tough to jump in and work side by side.