Society of Women Engineers - STEM Outreach Program

Society of Women Engineers-STEM Outreach Program to Middle School Girls

The mission of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) is to be an educational and service organization that empowers women to succeed and advance in the field of engineering and to be recognized for their life-changing contributions as engineers and leaders.

This project is aimed at increasing the interest of middle school girls in pursuing a STEM education and career.

It is well known that women are greatly underrepresented in STEM careers. One reason for this is the prevailing stereotype in our society that girls are supposed to like “dolls and pink” things and not STEM things. Research shows that one way to counter this is to involve middle school girls in activities which show STEM is fun. This works best if the activities are led by college women in weekly sessions such that the college women become role models. This project was started in 2012 by UNH’s College of Engineering and Physical Sciences (CEPS) SWE chapter in response to the Dean’s urging to help this underrepresentation issue in NH as indicated by the low 15% female engineering undergraduate students in CEPS compared to 60% female undergrads in UNH as a whole. The program is viewed as ongoing for successive classes SWE members and has evolved into two formats; one being SWE members going to a school for STEM workshops once a week for six weeks, the other being workshops followed by students busing to UNH for experiments in UNH engineering labs. SWE wants to expand their program from two to four or more schools per term and needs additional financial support to do so.

The predicted outcome of this program is to significantly increase UNH’s female engineering undergraduate numbers (currently ~200 out of 1300) by creating a steady and sustainable pipeline of STEM-ready, female students from each participating NH school system.