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. In a year’s time, we had increased female enrollment in our IT & CS Department from 149 to 226 female students and male enrollment had also increased from 751 to 1009 male students. 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. It made us really think outside the box and get more creative about the ways we could reach different demographics and teach our courses. I don’t think we would have ever done that if it wasn't for the WomenTech Educators Training. [...]

~ Michelle Levine, Interim District Director of Faculty Development, Broward College, FL participated with team in 2015 WomenTech Educators Online Bootcamp

“A lot of the ‘Why Should You Study IT?’ PowerPoint presentation that our Associate Dean developed was targeting women based on what we learned from the WomenTech Educators Training."

The presentation shows that IT is not just Tech, there is IT in every field. There is IT in hospitals, in any kind of service learning, and in any kind of non-profit. IT is everywhere. That seemed to be a big win for us because a lot of times people think IT is limited to Tech, but really IT is infused into every field.

~ Felicidad Archila, Computer Science Professor and Computer Information Technology Program Manager, Broward College, FL participated with team in a 2015 WomenTech Educators Online Bootcamp

“We recruited 9 new women to Welding in only 4 weeks after participating in a WomenTech Educators Training. Before the training, if we had 3 women in Welding it was like hitting a homerun. I tried some things like offering a Welding art class, but the women that came were not interested in our program. It was very frustrating; I realize now I didn’t have a plan."

It was the decisive work plan we developed as a team with Donna’s facilitation during the training that I believe made the biggest difference. Our plan included recruitment strategies that I would never have thought of myself. These strategies worked because they were so specific. The training made us look at everything differently, especially how the existing program brochures and other materials all featured men, and nothing featured any women. [...]

Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, you might as well go with something that has already worked for other schools—I believe that made the biggest difference for us. Otherwise, we could have gotten ten people together and sat in a room, but I am not sure we would have come out with the same outcomes or the same strategies that we did.”

~ Sue Silverstein, Welding Instructor, School of Technical & Applied Sciences, Milwaukee Area Technical College, Oak Creek, WI brought a team to a 2018 WomenTech Educators Online Bootcamp

“There was a big difference in how we recruited for our 1st cohort of Pre-Apprentices—which had no women—and our 2nd cohort that had 7. We thought it would be a lot easier than it turned out to be. The first time we partnered with community-based organizations to help us with recruitment, but after the WomenTech Training I realized we weren’t welcoming to women.

The WomenTech Training gave us a robust Version 2.0 Outreach Strategy. We had an entire platform and the messaging including: a Women and Automotive website, flyers featuring female role models, and a fact sheet with talking points about why automotive and apprenticeship is a good field for women. Plus, we had 3 Women in Automotive Meet & Greets with female automotive technicians.

The knowledgebase that IWITTS provided us on how to build an outreach strategy that targeted women helped us to tap existing resources within the college and led to our great results—from zero to 7 women in the Automotive Pre-Apprenticeship program in 2.5 months.”

~ Monique Forster Pascual, Director of Apprenticeship & Instructional Service Agreements, Workforce Development, CCSF, CA hosted a 2018 WomenTech Educators Onsite Training: Customized to Automotive, Apprenticeship, Grant Goals and Timeline

“The most valuable takeaway for me was the importance of looking at every part of the program and outreach through the unified lens of a women-focused perspective: What would it be like for a woman entering this type of male-dominated environment?

This thinking applied to everything: whether it was putting up images of female role models on the Evan’s Campus, using the Women and Automotive Technology banners or including language and images on the outreach flyers that would speak to women. It was extremely valuable for me to look through this lens.

~ Jonathan Berg, CCSF’s Employment & Training Specialist, CA participated with a team in a 2018 WomenTech Educators Onsite Training: Customized to Automotive, Apprenticeship, Grant Goals and Timeline

“Before the WomenTech Educators Training, I felt like I was just spinning my wheels trying to get more women into our Automotive Manufacturing Technology program. After the training, Lawson State went from only 2 female students in Automotive Manufacturing Technology to 11 in just over a year.

If you’re tired of spinning your wheels attempting to get more women in your program, then the WomenTech Educators Training is the way to do it. [...]

I think the team was the biggest difference. We were able to get all kinds of perspectives. I think it worked much better because we had buy-in from the instructors and the staff—if you're working on it and you're part of it, you own it. Our team owned the Recruitment and Retention Plans. We were able to hear what strategies had been tried in the past that didn’t work, so we could leave those out of our plan.”

~ Nancy Wilson, Assistant Dean, Career Technical Education, Lawson State Community College, Bessemer, AL brought a team to a 2017 WomenTech Educators Online Training

“The WomenTech Makerspace Training brought our team together and was expertly facilitated.

It led us through the process of capturing our busy faculty's ideas, and collected them in a very effective way. Now we have an action plan for a short timeframe, so we can be ready for students the next semester.

I don’t think we could have gotten to this point without Donna's facilitation. I knew from my past experience with IWITTS that Donna could help us create a plan that would produce results. The materials, the research-based strategies, the PowerPoint slides, and the sample Student Leads Sheets were all so valuable and engaged faculty in the process. The WomenTech Makerspace Training enabled CCSF to achieve our grant’s goals to make our MakerSPHERE inclusive to ALL students from day one. [...]

It’s very challenging work to change a culture and do these kinds of projects, and anytime I feel lost at sea I fall back on the plan.”

~ Maura Devlin-Clancy, MakerSPHERE Coordinator, Faculty, CNIT Department - Web Development Programs, City College of San Francisco, CA brought a team to a 2018 WomenTech Makerspace Onsite Training. CCSF achieved 50% female participation in the new Makerspace 101 course, 2 semesters in a row.

“Our college is a numbers-driven organization, so we know that the strategies we tried after the WomenTech Educators Training really made an impact. We now have more women in the program than we thought would be possible. We were able to go from only 1 female student to 15 in an Emerging Technologies course the very next semester after the training. A year later, we awarded almost half of our 43 Video Game Design & Development certificates to women. In fact, we're one of the programs that actually got off Perkins' Naughty List for not having enough women represented in the program because we were able to start meeting our goals.

~ Mark Evans, Program Chair and Instructor, Emerging Technologies, Athens Technical College, GA brought a team to a 2015 WomenTech Educators Online Training

“The WomenTech Educators Training was very eye-opening and it provided a vehicle and framework to focus our efforts. It gets you to think about what it takes to be successful. The most valuable aspect of the training was building our team! Getting a group of people focused and thinking about retention was a good thing. Getting the institutional buy-in is critical. While top-level management needs to know what's going on, it's the faculty—the people actually doing the work—that you need to get on board. [...]

When our team first participated in the WomenTech Educators Training, we were focused on the BioTech Manufacturing program, but we built that up and we've now translated the training to our other Manufacturing programs with a similar approach.

Everybody knows that you can't maintain 100% retention, but that was the case from that second cohort to the next. As your program builds, there's inevitably going to be some attrition, but we have kept a very high retention rate. [...]”

~ Dr. John Henshaw, Dean of Workforce Development at Mount Wachusett Community College and Project Director for Massachusetts Advanced Manufacturing TechHire Collaborative brought a team to a 2015 WomenTech Educators Online Training. Female enrollment went from only 1 female student to 9 out of 13 the next semester. Retention of both female and male students went from 50% to 100%.

“Before the WomenTech Educators Training, we had our own ideas about how to recruit more women, but they weren’t successful. The training helped us learn how to better recruit female students, so we were able to go from 2 to 7 female students in our introductory Automotive Technology courses.

The training also helped on the retention side because I had talking points I could use when I would sit down and talk with female students about, ‘What are you struggling with?’ If they weren’t sure about opening up, I knew what to say and that was a big help. [...]

~ Lewis Nall, Former Coordinator & Instructor of Automotive & Diesel Program, Owensboro Community & Technical College, KY brought a team to a 2015 WomenTech Educators Online Training

“Before attending the WomenTech Educators Training I had a lot more success retaining women in my database class than in my introductory Programming classes—actually, I wasn't retaining any women in my introductory Programming classes. They were all dropping.

That was a big win for me, that I had an increase in retention of females in my introductory Programming courses. [...]

I want to commend you [IWITTS] on the structure of the material and how when I walked out of the training, I had a plan.

If I had not had a plan, I would have gotten back and not done as much. Having a plan all laid out, when I walked in, gave me something I could work with. [...]

~ Barbara DuFrain, Associate Professor, Computer Science, Engineering and Advanced Technology, Del Mar College, TX participated in a 2012 WomenTech In-person Training, Female Enrollment in Her Computer Programming Class Increased by 65% and Retention of both female and male students increased by 45%.