Dear Administrator,

Are you frustrated by the challenges your institution has faced in recruiting and retaining more female students to your STEM classes and programs?

If you're like me, you want to see more women enrolled in STEM classes and prepared to explore all the engaging and fulfilling opportunities available in STEM career pathways.

It's time to see more female faces in your excellent STEM classes and programs!

You've been wanting to improve the educational diversity
of your classrooms…

But you keep running into roadblocks.

You're in the right place if...

• You have tried to recruit female students to your STEM programs and found your efforts haven't worked
• You have limited time and want to ensure your recruitment efforts are effective and efficient
• You finally recruited one or two female students to your STEM classes... Only to have them drop out
• You want to improve educational diversity across all your STEM programs
• Your male retention rate also needs improvement

Don't worry—these problems are not unique to your institution.

You're in the right place to improve the recruitment and retention of women and create lasting institutional change in your school, district, region or state!

Increase the number of women in your STEM classrooms with the action plans you'll create during the WomenTech Educators Training.

I'm so excited to tell you about the upcoming WomenTech Educators National Institute, a unique live WomenTech Educators Training targeted to administrators who want to focus on big picture strategies that will affect all of your STEM programs.

Whether you're a principal, dean, department chair, state-level administrator or other education leader, this training is a special opportunity to learn how to enroll up to 25-50% female students across your STEM programs and to ensure high retention rates for female AND male students.

You Will Learn:

Females in STEM: Key Factors for Recruitment

✓ Top three recruitment strategies & how to put them to use
✓ How to adopt a program-wide "female friendly" recruitment approach
✓ How to communicate the benefits of STEM at each stage of the recruitment process
✓ Effective strategies to involve faculty & staff in your recruiting effort

Gender Diversity in STEM: Boosting Enrollment & Implementing New Culture

✓ Barriers to recruiting women into STEM & how to overcome them
✓ How to identify your target audience for recruitment and low-hanging fruit
✓ Success in STEM: See actionable examples of successful STEM programs

Strategies to Keep STEM Students on Course & Improve Graduation Rates

✓ How to make female students feel welcome and what not to do
✓ Ways to bolster confidence in STEM students to ensure success
✓ Strategies to help your female students be successful in the lab
✓ Building block skills to help close the experience gap

Addressing the STEM Challenge: Appeal to Women Who Aren't Excited by STEM

✓ How faculty can teach to female learning styles
✓ How to connect students with female role models & create community
✓ An "ah-ha" moment on spatial reasoning - what you need to know

Build a Leadership Team Model for Women in STEM: Strategies for Success

✓ Ways to partner with faculty, administrators, student services & others
✓ No educator is an island: How to work together & boost STEM retention
✓ Top 3 qualities of an effective Leadership Team & how to employ them

Download the sample training agenda (PDF)

Download a letter to gain support (DOC)

You Will Take Away:

1. An easy-to-implement recruitment plan to greatly increase the number of women and girls in your STEM classrooms.
2. A retention plan for your school to increase the completion rate of your female (and male students), starting this semester.
3. The knowledge and confidence you need to put these plans into action right away, and free bonus tools that will help you be even more successful. (See FREE Takeaways below.)
4. Plus: A certificate of completion from IWITTS and the option for a unit of continuing education credit from Fresno Pacific University.

What Educators Are Saying About the Training:

"I left the training feeling equipped and empowered with the necessary tools to improve female performance and success in STEM programs."

~ Timothy Brown, Department Chair of Mathematics, Georgia Perimeter College, Dunwoody, GA

"Last year, the Computer Science department held an Open House event for prospective students. Although a few female high school students came, none of our female faculty members could attend and there weren't any women there representing the department.

After attending the workshop with IWITTS, I was committed to making sure that didn't happen again. At this year's Open House, the College of Sciences held a special Women in Technology event in partnership with the College of Engineering. The girls who came had a great experience, they learned a lot, and I'm confident that it strengthened their resolve to pursue careers in science and engineering. Our goal is to have enough female students in science and engineering majors so that the process can become self-reinforcing.

~ Fred Martin, Associate Dean of College of Sciences, University of Massachusetts Lowell

"In my division, we had about 200 students and only five of them were female. I have three daughters myself, and I really wanted to get more women interested in these technically oriented careers. I didn't realize initially that our programs may not have been welcoming for female students. Now, an important benefit that we've gotten from working with IWITTS is to have increased the number of female educators in the division. We're working together to recruit more female students, and to give them better support. We want to achieve a critical mass of female students in the classroom, so these numbers can become self-perpetuating."

~ Virgil Cox, Dean of Engineering & Industrial Technology, Gaston College, Dallas, NC

"Thank you so much for the information you presented. The manner in which you did so was easy to understand and comprehend. The fact that we were able to create plans to implement at our institution were helpful; especially since we were able to receive input immediately from our peers. This certainly allowed my partner and I to adjust our plans given others input and perspectives. Again, thank you!!."

~ Edda Urrea, Director of Support Services/Title IX Coordinator, Texas State Technical College Harlingen, Harlingen, TX

"Completely made me re-evaluate the approach that we have been taking. I realized the many mistakes and plan to make changes that I learned from the training. Great information!"

~ Hector Yanez, Engineering Division Director, Texas State Technical College, Harlingen, TX

"The training conducted by Donna Milgram was the best training I have ever received because I can implement the recruitment and retention plans I created specifically for my program Computer Information Management (CIM) to help increase females in technology at Irvine Valley College!"

~ Roopa Mathur, Professor, Computer Information Management, Irvine Valley College, Irvine, CA

"A lot of people, including me before I met Donna, do a lot of things that aren't necessarily recruitment, they're career awareness tools. People think if you put up a flyer that will solve the problem. Donna really taught us proven techniques to grow the program."

~ Edie Schmidt, Professor, Technology Leadership and Innovation/Supply Chain Management Technology, College of Technology, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN

"Participating in the IWITTS training refined my skills as an instructor and administrator to be an agent of change in this realm. Because Computer Networking and Information Technology was not on the radar of many women, the tools that were given to us by IWITTS for reaching out to students for our entry level class were very effective. And those changes have been institutionalized in my department. Thanks to our work with IWITTS, female enrollment in my department has risen from 19% to 33%."

~ Pierre Thiry, Principal Investigator, Mid-Pacific ICT Regional Center, San Francisco, CA (ATE Center)

See the full list of testimonials

Event Details At-A-Glance:

Event: WomenTech Educators Training

Location: San Francisco Bay Area, California

Dates: June 16 & 17, 2016

Schedule: Thursday, June 16: 8:30 am – 5:00 pm
Friday, June 17: 8:00 am – 4:30 pm

Airport: San Francisco International Airport (SFO) or Oakland Airport (OAK)

Hotel: The event will be held at one of our favorite San Francisco Bay Area hotels, a beautiful Sheraton with a specially reduced event room rate.

Click here for full hotel and travel details.

Save your spot right away

Continuing Education Credit:

Fresno Pacific University is now offering one unit of continuing education credit to training participants!

I am so excited to see you at our National Training Institute LIVE!

Warmly,

Donna Milgram
Executive Director, The National Institute for Women in Trades, Technology and Science  

About Your Trainer: Donna Milgram

Learn directly from Executive Director Donna Milgram, the creator of the WomenTech Educators Training

Donna Milgram is the founder and Executive Director of the Institute for Women in Trades, Technology and Science (IWITTS), a national nonprofit organization founded in 1994 that provides educators with a roadmap to increasing the number of women and girls in science, technology, engineering and math.

• Ms. Milgram developed the WomenTech Educators Training to help educators nationwide increase the number of women in their technology programs.
• A nationally recognized expert on closing the gender gap for women and girls in STEM, Ms. Milgram has personally conducted hundreds of WomenTech Educators Trainings in 46 states and Canada.
• She is the author of numerous peer-reviewed articles and conference presentations including the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) and Women in Engineering Proactive Network (WEPAN). Presentation highlights from 2014 include:
  • U.S. Department of Education, Moving STEM Forward in the Career, Technical and Adult Symposium;
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Challenging Technical Privilege Symposium Panel; and,
  • Engineering for Kids Conference (Keynote Presenter)
• Donna has been featured in the media on CNN, Fox Morning News, C-Span, and National Public Radio, and has been quoted in major newspapers such as The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, Associated Press, and more.
• An innovative leader, Donna Milgram draws upon over 21 years of experience leading successful projects. The recent CalWomenTech Project was highlighted by the National Science Foundation for demonstrating significant achievement and program effectiveness and chosen as 1 of 3 model projects by the American Association of University Women.