Science, Mathematics and Engineering

Tony Romanello

Murray High School

Murray, UT

As the director of a pilot program designed to recruit and maintain female enrollment in high school physics, I have found that the success of our program, like many others, was a combination of good planning and sheer luck. However, after observing the interaction of our participants with their mentors, seeing their excitement as they took completed projects home after each session, and reading their evaluations, I have been able to draw some conclusions about what made the program a positive experience for so many of our participants. I believe that these conclusions can be generally applied to the design of any successful program to engage high school girls in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering. There are four major factors to be considered; recruitment, mentoring and social interaction, uniqueness of skills or activities, and encouragement/affirmation.

The first factor, recruitment, is rather obvious. If you want high school girls to participate in your program, you have to provide them with a reason to want to be there. Contrary to what educators would like to believe, students, especially female students, do not participate in science programs solely because they like science. Their time is valuable, and you must convince them that the time it takes to participate in your program will be time well spent. For new programs, such as ours, recruitment is primarily at the mercy of the teacher in their local school, which can be a "hit or miss" proposition. In order to facilitate this, I made personal contact with the physics teachers at the schools we wished to recruit from. I discussed the program with them, provided them with flyers about the program and answered their questions about what to tell their students about the program. This was reasonably effective in several schools, however, two schools did nothing with the information and hence, had no participants. Now that the program is established, we will continue to recruit at the schools, and will rely somewhat on the teachers, however, we will also be able to point interested students to our web page from the previous year, and we will have past participants come with us to make presentations at each of the schools we wish to recruit from. The second factor, and the one that makes the greatest impact on the success of a program of this type is mentoring.

Mentoring demonstrates to female students that women can and are successful in science. Using college age mentors is most effective because it not only gives them a role model to follow, but also provides them with a one on one experience with someone closer to their own age, who is currently studying in the field. A student mentor can empathize with their struggles in science classes, as well as the high school female’s feeling that she is all alone in the "boy’s club". The second type of mentoring was the role model provided by the guest speakers. This was important because it emphasized that women can have successful careers in science related fields and that they found their work both enjoyable and rewarding.

It was also important to have the guest speakers stay for lunch and to interact informally with the participants. Both of these types of mentoring, the one on one, and the role model, when used informally, create a social atmosphere in your program. At first, being male, and very task oriented, I wondered if this social interaction was a good thing or if it was a distractor, however, after watching the participants interact with their mentors, I realized that thissocialization was how these young women built trust, and without a strong trust in their mentor, the mentoring process would not be effective.

I found in our program, where students did an icebreaker activity at the beginning of each session, and were provided with time to interact informally with their mentors during breaks, and at lunch, good mentor-participant relations were evident by the second session. Outside of the sessions, students had access to a directory with all participants and mentors pictures, home addresses, and phone numbers which allowed everyone to stay in contact and built a feeling of connection between all involved.

After recruiting a good mentors and participants, and providing them with the time and means to communicate effectively and to interact regularly, you must then provide them with unique and worthwhile activities. These must be activities that stimulate their interest and are not part of traditional classroom instruction in their home school. It is best if these activities result in a final product which the participants can point to and say "I did that!" These projects must be challenging, and you must provided the students with the resources to successfully accomplish these activities.

In our program we would pick a physics related topic, such as electrical circuits, and then find a project that not only provided students with a working model of the topic, but also the expert instruction to make the project a success. In this case, we found a kit, "The talking alarm clock" at a local hobby shop and hired the school electronics teacher to come in and help with instruction on how to build it. He developed a lesson plan on soldering, a skill not usually taught in physics, and he devised a plan for building the clock, that was, from his experience, quicker and easier than the step by step method in the instructions. This not only speeded up the process and insured that each students clock would work, but allowed him time to discuss such topics and the resistor color code, and how a printed circuit board works. These topics expanded upon the electrical theory covered the participant’s physics class at their local school and when the project was over all of the students had a clock that worked. Furthermore, each participant stated in their session evaluation that they had learned things that they never knew about electronic devices.

Finally, the last step to a successful program is to remember that you are working with young people who are in an under-represented group in an extracurricular program. This is different than working in a curricular program with students who are in the majority. Since it is extracurricular and covers an extended period of time, students tend to need frequent reminders of session dates and activities. And since they are an under-represented group they often need special encouragement, affirmation, and incentives to make attendance at this type of program a priority in their lives.

In our program we sent out reminders and reply cards two weeks prior to each session and we had alternate participants who could come when the regular paticipants were unable to attend. [This is a frequent occurrence with high school students, since they tend to get over involved and over committed rather regularly.] We also provided them with a schedule of events as part of their reminder. This let them know exactly what they would be able to "make and take" at each session and served as a form of encouragement for each of them. Also, we made sure that when they came to each session, someone greeted them with a warm smile and a hello, as well as a continental breakfast.

Affirmation is something that these young women need regularly. It was important to stress this in the training of the mentors and in monitoring both their behavior and the behavior of each of the guest speakers and camp directors. As mentors, the college students were advised to constantly keep track of how their participants were doing on each project and to try and provide encouragement throughout the sessions. As directors, we tried to spend a great deal of time walking around and "checking in" with each participant and making positive comments on their work. This personal interaction provided regular affirmation to the participants that they were valuable to the program and that they could be successful.

Finally, by way of incentive, we had several sponsors who contributed door prizes that were given away at each session. These included everything from pen and pencils to Texas Instrument calculators. These prizes generated a great deal of excitement among the participants and provided them with an incentive to return each session.

In conclusion, designing a successful program for high school girls begins with a heavy recruiting effort to find the right mix of students, extensive recruiting and training program for college aged mentors, and obtaining the services of excellent guest speakers who are excited to participate in the program. It continues with the planning and execution of worthwhile activities that the participants would not otherwise have the opportunity to do at their home school, and it provides a constant flow of affirmation and incentive to keep these young women from becoming discouraged. A program that works hard to provide these things will be successful in providing a positive science experience for young women and will be an effective tool in keeping them on the path to a science related career.