Recruitment
Use these proven strategies to recruit women to science and technology classes and careers.
In 2007, 10 of Phillip Jelinek's 125 Automotive Technology students in Monrovia, CA were female. In his 21 years of teaching this class, he has always had between 3 and 13 girls in his classes. It's clear that he uses recruitment and retention strategies that work.
Five years after introducing three key recruitment and retention strategies, women now make up around 42% of Harvey Mudd College's computer science program. In this Google Tech Talk video, Christine Alvarado shares the three practices Harvey Mudd College implemented to increase the number of women in their CS program: 1) new curriculum for CS1, 2) scholarship trips for female freshman to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computer Science, and 3) hands-on research projects for female sophomore CS students.
Watch Christine Alvarado's Google Tech Talk video on YouTube.
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Alvarado, C. (2011, March 8). Women in CS @ HMC: Three Promising Practices. Retrieved from Google TechTalk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF_Gkxqf158&lr=1&uid=t84aUC9OG6di8kSdKzEHTQ |
This National Academy of Sciences book on better practices for the recruitment, retention and promotion of women scientists and engineers can be browsed online or downloaded as a PDF for free. It includes strategies actually implemented by universities to recruit more women to undergraduate and graduate science and engineering programs, to reduce attrition in the programs, and to improve retention at critical transition points."
Read To Recruit and Advance: Women Students and Faculty in Science and Engineering on the National Academies Press website.
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Committee on the Guide to Recruiting and Advancing Women Scientists and Engineers in Academia, Committee on Women in Science and Engineering, National Research Council. (2006). To Recruit and Advance: Women Students and Faculty in Science and Engineering. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. Retrieved from http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11624&page=5 |
Researchers analyzed data from 140 Latina and Caucasian girls in a California middle school during the first day of an IT-intensive after school program. They found that a young woman’s interest in computer science could be predicted from her curiosity about technology and the support of her peers and teachers.
Download the article from the International Journal of Gender, Science and Technology.
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Denner, J. (2011). What Predicts Middle School Girls' Interest in Computing? International Journal of Gender, Science and Technology, 3(1), 53-69. Retrieved from http://genderandset.open.ac.uk/index.php/genderandset/article/view/106 |
CheME & YOU @ OSU is a six-day, residential camp for ninth-grade girls designed to introduce them to chemical engineering. In post-camp questionnaires 62% of participants said that they agreed with the statement, “I am more interested in chemical engineering as a result of participating in CheME & YOU.” 75% of parents and guardians also reported that their daughters were more interested in engineering after having attended the camp.
Download the PDF from the American Society for Engineering Education.
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Copyright© American Society for Engineering Education. By viewing this paper, you agree to all the copyright laws protecting it. Friedman, R., LaRue, G., & Artis, S. (2010). Strengthening The Engineering Pipeline One Field And One Woman At A Time: The Role Of Single Discipline, Single Sex Engineering Camps. The U.S. Conference Proceedings of 2010 Annual ASEE Conference & Exposition. American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) |
The WomenTech Educators Training got us thinking intentionally about who we were going to target for outreach, how we were going to target them, and how we would follow up to make sure we had actual results linked to the different programs and events that we were holding. Since then, it has grown organically and blossomed into something that our college just does naturally.
I think getting together as a team with intention—because we're all so busy—and developing a written plan that we could stick to was what made all the difference. I don’t think we would have ever done that if it wasn't for the WomenTech Educators Training.