Recruiting
&
Retaining
Women
in STEM
The Problem
The Problem
In the US in 2012, women earned...
- 57% of all undergraduate degrees
- 59% of the undergrad degrees in biology
- 42% of the undergrad degrees in math
- 18% of the undergrad degrees in computing
- 19% of the undergrad degrees in engineering
STEM Undergraduate Degrees
Bachelor's Degrees in CS
Recruitment Strategy:
Identify Your Target Audience
- The low hanging fruit:
-
Undeclared female students who already have building block courses
- Female students who are undeclared and need building block skills
- Women in the community who are unemployed, underemployed, or career changers
- High school students
Recruitment Strategy:
A compelling intro course
-
Make students want to take more classes!
-
Intro to Programming with Robots
-
Hands-on interactive activities
-
Graphical/game programming
-
Other ideas???
Recruitment Strategy:
Personal encouragement
Encourage a potential student to enroll in your program.
- Tell them about career opportunities and salaries, and the companies that have hired your students in the past.
- Focus on how technology helps others.
- Talk about how this is a good field for women.
- Provide strong personal encouragement to enroll in a class.
- Tell them you believe they can be successful.
- Ask them if they have any questions.
Recruiting is everyone's job!
Recruitment Strategy:
Female Role Models
Women need to see other women.
- Invite female alumni & industry guests to events
- Recruit from local networking groups
- Posters, brochures, videos
-
Guest speakers
Diversity sells itself.
Recruitment Strategy:
Online presence
Most students go online to learn about schools and programs
- One in five students said they removed a school from consideration because of a bad experience on the institution's web site. (Noel-Levitz, 2011)
- 27% of prospective students visit a college Facebook page
- 55% of prospective students watch videos
- 93% of students check their college email at least weekly
-
Use responsive design -- an increasing number of students are using smart phones!
Online Marketing
- Tell the story of the program and the work it prepares you for
- Make a personal/emotional connection
- 50% of images, bios, testimonials and videos should be female
- Email campaign/newsletter
- Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn/Google+
- Integrate FB into your website
- Content
- role model bios and videos
- job information
- real-world applications for tech
- upcoming events
- registration reminders
Social Media with HootSuite
Recruitment Strategy:
Events
Internal events are most effective for enrollment increases
Key elements:
- Female role models
- Tours and hands on activities
- Program/job/registration information
- Keep a sign-in list
- We used door prizes as incentive
- Market a specific program
- Food is always a draw! (Have some healthy alternatives)
- Advertise
- Personal invites
Recruitment Strategy:
Press coverage
-
Press release
-
TV and radio
-
Student paper
-
Local community papers
Recruitment Strategy: Community outreach
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Tech Expos
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High School College Fairs
-
Summer Camps
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"Dog & Pony" Shows to local schools
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Open houses
These are a long-term investment!
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/17/356944145/episode-576-when-women-stopped-coding
Why do women leave?
-
Lack of confidence
-
Perception of poor grades
-
Lack of building block skills
-
Unfriendly classroom environment
-
Lack of community
-
Learning style/curriculum unappealing
-
Work overload
NC University found that men were more likely to repeat a class,
while women were more likely to drop out, even though
women's grades were just as high as the men's.
while women were more likely to drop out, even though
women's grades were just as high as the men's.
Building Block Skills:
Kids & Games
-
What do girls typically grow up playing?
-
What do boys typically grow up playing?
-
How does that translate into skills?
-
What skills are needed to succeed in a Computer Science program?
Building Block Skills
-
Tinkering
-
Problem solving
-
Trial and error
- Computers
-
Spatial reasoning
Girls are more likely to give up when things get difficult
Retention Strategy:
Welcome your students
-
First weeks are critical
-
Model positive interaction with female students
-
Let your female students know you believe in them
-
Instill confidence and success
Retention Strategy:
Level the playing field
-
Provide building block / bridge skills
- Pre-programs or mini-courses
- MIT EE/CS has longer, slower-paced versions of critical intro courses
- Boot camps
- ASU provided a four-day summer program for freshmen
- Academic support services
- Tutoring
- Learning community
- Open lab time
- Additional class resources, tutorials, practice exercises
Retention Strategy:
Teach problem solving
-
Design exercises that reward guessing and intuition
-
Focus on the process
-
Failure --> Persistence --> Success
Retention Strategy:
Address the math gap
- Women and minorities are generally less prepared in math
- Contextual math is more effective for women and minorities
- Provide parallel math content
- UC Berkeley provided a parallel calculus support course
- Teach math in context
- Math prereqs are often unrelated to the math needed and used
- Good communication with the instructor and tutoring can help alleviate math anxiety
Retention Strategy:
Different learning styles
Many women prefer collaboration to competition.
-
Solve real life problems
-
Make curriculum relevant
-
Do collaborative group work
-
Pair programming!
-
Engage in real world projects
Classes that offer substantial teamwork opportunities
increase retention of both women and men!
increase retention of both women and men!
Retention Strategy:
Address obstacles
-
Teach students how to find information and move into imperfect action.
-
Women often want to understand the whole picture, and can be anxious about making mistakes.
-
Men are often less perfectionistic... "As long as it works."
-
Make it explicit that making mistakes is the best way to learn.
Retention Strategy:
Build community
-
Open Labs
- Learning Community
- Study groups
- Create a club
-
Women's networks
- SWE
- Systers Listserv
- Meetups
Resources
- This presentation largely came from the online training course provided through the Institute for Women in Trades, Technology & Science (IWITTS)
- NCWIT describes 6 key practices for piquing girls’ (and
boys’)
interest in computing. www.ncwit.org/practices -
NCWIT Scorecard (lots of awesome charts and graphs)
-
Positive role models (female role models positively influence girls)
[Source: Dryburgh, H. (2000). Underrepresentation of girls and
women in computer science: Classification of 1990s research.
Journal of Educational Computing Research, 23(2), 181–202.] - Tina's "Grit" Posters
Recruiting & Retaining Women in STEM