Wake Up With the Sunshine
In the United States today, females only represent thirteen percent of the engineering workforce and only 26 percent of computer scientist positions. In addition, only seventeen percent of registered architects are women with only 20 percent of women earning a degree as a physicist, which is the lowest amongst all the physical sciences.
Occupations in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) are projected to grow thirteen percent through 2022 while the number of students in the United States electing to earn an undergraduate STEM-related degree is decreasing. All the while, females remain underrepresented in the STEM workforce with an increasing demand for degrees and employees to fill important, needed roles. Consequently, the United States is forced to seek workers from outside the country to fill much-needed STEM-related positions (especially in areas of engineering). This phenomenon, however, is not new. Since the 1990s the number of foreign-born STEM workers in the United States has increased with one-fifth to one quarter of the STEM workforce being represented by foreign-born employees.
While these statistics create pause in terms of challenges impacting STEM education and the workforce, they have been increasing over the past two decades. Female underrepresentation in STEM, the increasing demand for STEM-related careers coupled with decreasing undergraduate degree conferral, and the need to look outside the country to employ STEM workers within the United States are phenomena educators and employers continue to address and confront.
All Your Dreams Are Still as New
Beginning in 2008, I began partnering and collaborating with Kevin Kopack, an educator whom I would eventually hire as a department chair to lead our growing science department of over 40 teachers. Kevin was an especially dynamic teacher leader who collaborated with me on a variety of projects including our STEM (and later, STEAM) program as well partnering to create solutions for increasing the numbers of disproportionately underrepresented student subgroups in our STEM courses.
A good portion of this work relied on including teachers and creating an atmosphere of collegiality to identify instructional practices and school wide gaps for addressing deficiencies. Our goal was to create a supportive environment for students to self-actualize and picture themselves as participants in a world of possibilities. A student’s self-perception of the world influences how she sees her place in the world. Creating a supportive learning environment empowers learners to reshape identities and develop confidence.
Rather than simply telling teachers what we were observing in classrooms and school wide, we created opportunities to construct professional dialogue between teachers to empower them to identify areas for improvement firsthand. We employed non-evaluative opportunities for professional discussions via collegial coaching to facilitate these conversations along with our own observations. We utilized collegial coaching because it provided a construct for colleagues to observe one another and further collaborate by utilizing a four-part process for guiding professional discussions and self-reflection.
I was also extremely familiar with the collegial coaching process. I began researching dialogue and collaboration in 2004 during my doctoral studies and utilized collegial dialogue as a strategy for engaging science teachers while serving as an instructional coach. I later presented alongside collegial coaching author, Mary Lou Dantonio, at the 2005 NSDC Summer Conference on questioning and creating authentic dialogue for leading and coaching. As a presenter and administrator working with teachers, I worked with educators on employing collegial coaching in a non-evaluative setting to facilitate interaction, collaboration, and dialogue. The organic nature of the coaching processes was participatory and reciprocal, which facilitated professional discourse.
In some instances, collegial coaching created difficult, yet fruitful, conversations. These conversations included colleagues observing, for example, that female students in physics were called upon with significantly less frequency than their male counterparts. This was not isolated to just one classroom. In the most difficult, yet courageous conversation, a female teacher developed awareness of her own inherent bias in terms of infrequent interactions with her own female students. The professional practices of the teacher were, of course, surprising to her but created meaningful self-reflection. As a result of the collegial coaching process, she was empowered to reflect on her practice and made a concerted effort to call on and check for understanding with female students to better engage all learners.
In addition to creating professional discourse with regard to unintentional bias and professional habits of mind, Kevin and I identified the need to better encourage and support female students to consider professions in STEM-related fields. It was glaring that we lacked a school wide concerted effort, structure, or process, which indicated we had a solution to find. Our goal was to reach students school wide and not just within STEM-related departments.
From 2009 through 2011, we began working with IIT, UIC, and other institutions to create partnerships for increasing supports for prospective female STEM students. Kevin had an engineering geologist, Angie Diefenbach, who was with the United States Geological Survey focused on work concerning active volcanoes. Angie was from Oregon and came to speak to our female students about the work she was doing as well as presented to students in the ChemClub. Angie’s visit was an immense success. As she shared information with respect to her own work, our female students were inspired to interact and hear firsthand about the experiences of a fellow female in the field of STEM.
The authentic feedback loops we observed were an inspiration for us as educators and also paved the way for ideas for creating a formal structure that could be employed school wide. This process helped to capture the imagination of our students and create authentic conversations for a “can do” attitude in terms of pursuing STEM degrees and professions. As our students learned about Angie’s work with a program called GeoGirls at the Mount St. Helens Institute, we were inspired to create a similar program for our female students. My goal was to inspire students to see the possibilities within themselves.
The GeoGirls Mount St. Helens Institute includes a Science and Learning Center with expert-led field seminars and guided exploration programs for Mount St. Helens and the geology of the region. The partnership with GeoGirls provided meaningful information about the worlds of engineering and geology, Mount St. Helens, and the surrounding Gifford Pinchot National Forest. This created possibilities for our students to visit the Pacific Northwest and for encouraging our female students in particular to pursue careers in engineering and other areas of STEM.
Happiness is What You Need
In an effort to create formal, ongoing structures for opportunities for our female students to learn more about STEM from female STEM professionals, we began researching what other types of organizations and/or structures existed and how we could partner to encourage the pursuit of degrees in STEM. One of our chemistry teachers had previously worked at Niles West (just north of Chicago) and led a Girls Empowering Math and Science (GEMS) program. We visited Niles West to learn about the work they were doing with their female students and how we could better afford motivational supports. We also continued learning about existing structures at UIC, Northern University, and Penn State.
In spring, 2011, we were in the unique position to hire a number of new teachers in several STEM departments. Together, we created the framework for a school wide club to provide opportunities for female students to meet with guest speakers, be provided mentoring, and visit outside organizations. The goal was to have the club for girls with a sponsoring female teacher (or teachers) from one of our STEM departments. We had a number of female teachers who were already sponsoring or highly involved with a variety of STEM-related work across the building and chose to include sponsoring the club as part of the new positions we were interviewing to fill for the upcoming school year.
In September 2011, we recruited the first of many coordinators and co-coordinators of our Girls in Engineering Math and Science (GEMS) club. Although Kevin and I founded GEMS, we could not sponsor/coordinate the club (for obvious reasons!) and needed female teachers in STEM to lead the effort. We also wanted to create student leadership within the club for decision-making but would first have to establish GEMS with a female teacher club sponsor. While interviewing one of many new, potential physics teachers, one candidate in particular was excited because she was already sponsoring a similar program at University of Illinois Chicago (UIC).
Physics candidate, Emily Finchum, was a mentor/tutor for a Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) program while she was a student at UIC. Emily and I discussed the start of what I wanted to call GEMS (Girls in Engineering Math and Science). She was also involved in the Girls’ E-Mentoring in Science, Engineering, and Technology (GEM-SET) program at UIC. Emily was beaming with the prospect of sponsoring the club, which was perfect because she was intrinsically interested to support our diverse body of female students for exploring careers in STEM. Although we were excited to create GEMS, we did not want to have someone coordinate GEMS if she was not inherently motivated to do so. Emily was the perfect candidate. Beginning that school year, with GEMS founded, we officially established GEMS as a vehicle for empowering our girls.
We were fully prepared to support the program but understood that there was also a possibility there may not be enough interest to sustain GEMS. We also wanted the students to lead GEMS once it was established. The goal was to establish GEMS and then serve by providing resources as requested or needed.
We provided resources by asking all teachers in the math and science departments (including computer science and engineering programs) to promote events and help get girls registered for visiting UIC, IIT, the AIChE conference, Project SYNCERE, Google, etc. We provided materials for distribution and served as informational resources for parents.
We communicated to stakeholders that GEMS was established as a result of the strong gender gap in STEM-related fields and that GEMS was founded to build capacity in young women entering the fields of math, science, and engineering. A large portion of our efforts centered on educating our girls on how to be successful in these fields by accessing female experts through field trips, guest-speakers, research with universities/organizational partners, and through service learning efforts.
The Answer Lies with You
By the following school year, GEMS more than doubled in size. We went from approximately 70 girls to over 140. Within another two years, we had over three hundred female students participating. We added new coordinators and continued outreach to the universities and expanded our efforts to our sending elementary schools.
Female students were motivated to consider and pursue STEM degrees and careers. We closely partnered with UIC’s WISE program. Our students actively connected to mentors and role models in STEM at the undergraduate, graduate, and professional levels.
One of our GEMS students, who aspired to be an anesthesiologist nurse, shared how excited she was that we had an anesthesiologist nurse come to speak to the club. She noted, “I have heard about many women taking the lead in scientific jobs but I never had the chance to meet any.” That quote actually appeared in our school newspaper and when I read it I felt several years of validation in one sentence. I was ecstatic. When young people see others that look like them excelling in careers and life, that reflection can be life changing. It serves as a projection for the future. That is the goal of education.
Since its inception, thousands of students have participated in GEMS. Over the years we received an extraordinary level of positive feedback regarding GEMS and how it created authentic opportunities for mentoring and inspired the pursuit of careers in STEM. While I am proud of the impact this has made on females in STEM, I believe the most important attribute is the creation of a holistic mindset for developing learners’ self-worth and efficacy. I believe these are central to developing and inspiring the spirit to free the mind.
Chris
Referenced links and documents:
Empathy by Chris Dignam and Liam Carolan
Foreign-Born STEM Workers in the United States, American Immigration Council
GEMS Program Attracts Lane Girls to Field of Science, The Warrior
Girls Take Over Boys Club at Lane Tech, North Center-Roscoe Village, Illinois Patch
Penn GEMS, Penn Engineering
What is and What Should Never Be by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant