Empowering Middle School Girls in STEM

[kolycholy]

my project involves doing something that involves community service work...

I wanted to do a project on middle school girls to encourage them to pursue engineering, because the number of women engineers in US (or any other place in general I think) does not look very promising. Now, I wouldn't hesitate to include physics, computer science, math etc in the project, because these subjects are not supposed to be a girl's forte. However, I'm a bit reluctant to make it a science project rather than an engineering project, because science would include biology, chemistry etc, and I think girls are doing fine in those fields. (look at the number of female doctors we have?!)
now that I have told you about my general vague idea about my project, i am afraid that there's not something unique/creative about my project. In other words, I googled my project idea and I found out other universities have carried out similar stuff.

so I was wondering what could I possibly do to make the project more exciting and something that has not been done before? at the end of day, it needs to be a community service project though. (although we don't need to stress this too much)

 

[physics girl phd]

What is this project for? a class?...research? i.e. why you are concerned about its "creativity-value"? If it's really to accomplish something, maybe an already-successful program is a good thing to copy, and you can include some of that research in your project write-up, justifying your project decision (after all, if a successful program isn't in your community, getting one going is GOOD). Or maybe is the program interests you but isn't really shown to encourage girls to become engineers, can you think of a way to measure that in the time-frame of your project?

Then: What is the time frame of your project with the students? What are some of the ideas you already have or have found? Can you modify them slightly to make the more "yours"? Let's continue this discussion!

 

[nikola-tesla]

Although I don't have any idea but I am very much interested in this topic too. Please do not stop. Thank you.

 

[kolycholy]

What is this project for? a class?...research? i.e. why you are concerned about its "creativity-value"? If it's really to accomplish something, maybe an already-successful program is a good thing to copy, and you can include some of that research in your project write-up, justifying your project decision (after all, if a successful program isn't in your community, getting one going is GOOD). Or maybe is the program interests you but isn't really shown to encourage girls to become engineers, can you think of a way to measure that in the time-frame of your project?

Then: What is the time frame of your project with the students? What are some of the ideas you already have or have found? Can you modify them slightly to make the more "yours"? Let's continue this discussion!

the project is for a class, but the last time I checked, it was supposed to be a research project ...
I was also thinking instead of encouraging girls to pursue math and physics, maybe I should try to find the reason they don't pursue math and physics ...
i know you would think that why not both? but i don't think i would have that much time ... i have about a semester to finish the project ...
i'm still pretty open to suggestions though

 

[Stephan Hoyer]

Take a lot at information on Expanding Your Horizons conferences: http://www.expandingyourhorizons.org/

They do essentially what you're talking about.

 

[Ki Man]

because the number of women engineers ... does not look very promising.

Some studies say that females are mentally more challanged by math and science than men. They even have a MISS program at CalState Fullerton to help girls with those subjects over the summer.

Can you tell us more specifically what class this is?