Southern Illinois University at Carbondale is located roughly at the center of the 22 county region lying south of Interstate 64 and known unofficially as "Southern Illinois." The region borders on southern Missouri, southern Indiana and northern Kentucky. Sixteen of these 22 counties are Mississippi Delta counties, as identified by regional and federal task forces in the 1980's. This is a rural, traditionally economically depressed region whose main industries are farming and coal mining. Many schools are not equipped to provide good science education, especially in physics and chemistry. It is not unusual to find teachers assigned to teach math, physics and chemistry who are not actually trained in these areas.

A group known on the SIUC campus as the Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) group has existed informally since 1989. Recognizing that women are still significantly under-represented in virtually all engineering fields, in mathematics, physics, chemistry, geology and other physical sciences, the WISE group has sought to develop programs that would attract women into the Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology (SMET) pipeline and retain women already in the pipeline. These programs come under the umbrella of the Southern Illinois Science, Engineering and Math (SISEM) Women and Girls Support Network. Consistent with the service and educational mission of the university, SISEM programs have reached out to all 22 Southern Illinois counties, and beyond.

Activities have been organized for females ranging from grade 4 to the first year of college. Most have received NSF support. Additional support has come from various schools, colleges and administrators at SIUC as well as some local businesses. These activities include:

• WISE summer camp (1991 and 1996).

• Expanding Your Horizons (EYH) conferences (annually since 1991).

• "GATEWAYS" Conferences (1998 and 1999).

• Science Fair support groups (1995, 1996)

• Science Center Exhibit Building Days (twice in 1996; once in 1998)

• Girl Scout (GSUSA) Field Trips to the St Louis Science Center (1997, 1998, 1999)

• Carbondale Chamber of Commerce Technology Expo (1998, 1999)

• SISEM home page (http://www.siu.edu/~sisemnet).

As of the spring of 1999, over 3,000 girls and young women have participated in our activities (this total does not subtract out those who have participated more than once.)

Of the activities listed above, EYH has been fully "institutionalized" in the sense that it continues with the support of SIUC (including part-time staff) and without external funding other than registration fees. The 1998 GATEWAYS conference was supported through an NSF grant. The 1999 GATEWAYS conference is receiving significant support at the level of the SIUC Chancellor’s office. It appears likely that it will continue with SIUC support.

As an outgrowth of the grant-supported activities of the early and middle 1990's, a staff person is employed by SIUC’s Electrical Engineering department to assist with the clerical work associated with several (College of Engineering) grants and to keep the SISEM homepage updated. This person helped publicize SISEM activities at the 1998 and 1999 Carbondale Chamber of Commerce Technology Expos.

The 1997 and 1998 GSUSA field trips were supported from our NSF grant. The 1999 GSUSA Field Trip was supported by an internal grant from SIUC’s University Women’s Professional Advancement with matching funds from the School of Medicine, the College of Science and the College of Engineering.

The WISE Summer Camps, Science Fair Support Workshops and the Science Center Exhibit Building Days were supported through NSF grants; they have not been institutionalized.

PROGRAM DESIGN:

Both summer camps were supported by NSF grants. Objectives of both camps were:

1. to expose the participants to hands-on, small group activities in science, engineering and mathematics;
2. to develop participants’ confidence in their own ability to pursue studies and careers in these areas; and
3. to give participants a clearer picture of what a career in science would be like.

It was also expected that participation in the camp should help to increase the recruitment and retention of women in science, engineering and mathematics.

The 1991 camp ran for two weeks. The 23 participants were either entering college freshmen or had just completed the first year of college. They were housed in a residence hall on the SIUC campus and were expected to participate in morning, afternoon and evening activities each day. Some evenings were left free for the women to relax and get to know each other. The daytime activities included small group science lab or field experiences running for 2, 3 or 4 days consecutively. The sessions were led by women scientists, mathematicians and engineers from SIUC and some of the regional community colleges. Scheduled evening activities typically included a special speaker followed by a question-answer period and a social time. Participants were given room and board and a stipend since they would normally be earning money at a summer job during the time period of the camp. The workshop leaders were given an honorarium. Towards the end of the camp, each participant selected one of the workshop leaders to serve as a mentor. The mentoring relationship was expected to go on for at least a year following the camp. There were follow-up, one-day workshops in the fall of 1991 and spring of 1992.

The 1996 camp ran for 8 weekdays. The 37 participants were high school seniors, their mean age was 17 years. There was an almost near even split of participants who commuted to the camp each day and those who were housed in a residence hall on the SIUC campus. The daytime activities and evening activities were scheduled and organized as in the 1991 summer camp although some of the speakers and workshop leaders had changed. Students were asked on their application forms which areas in science interested them the most. If those areas fit with the workshops being given they were sure to be assigned to at least one workshop in that area. However, in an attempt to broaden the participants’ view of what they might like in science and math, they were also assigned to a workshop that did not match their area of interest. In general, all participants were assigned to a "hard" and a "soft" science workshop. The mentoring aspect of the 1991 camp was not attempted for this camp. The pre-camp and post-camp survey forms were analyzed by Applied Research Consultants and some of the results are in the tables below.

When asked what they expected to learn at camp, many responded with "How to use the Internet". The nine sessions were in the following areas: geology (1), psychology (2), chemistry (1), world wide web (1), mathematics (3), and histotechnology (1).

In terms of what areas of science interested the participants most, biology and zoology were by far the most popular. Popular responses for what they liked most about the Summer Camp were: "meeting new people, learning about the Internet, learning about science careers, learning new things, and the variety in the workshops" [1]. The overwhelming response to what they would change about the summer camp was to let the participants choose which workshops they go to and several participants would not change anything.

The participants from the 1991 summer camp represented 16 of the 22 Southern Illinois counties; 10 of these were Mississippi Delta counties. Participants from the 1996 summer camp represented 11 counties, of which 8 were Mississippi Delta counties.

PITFALLS:

• Very expensive!! The budget for the 1991 camp was $62,000 for a total of 23 participants. The budget for the 1996 camp was approximately $90,000 for a total of 40 participants.

• Mentoring after the 1991 summer camp did not continue as vigorously as we had hoped. Perhaps geographical distance was a factor in this? Another factor was that three of the eight faculty members who led summer workshops for the 1991 camp left SIUC during the following year. (This could be interpreted as a testimonial to the importance of programs like this. There is still a need to improve the climate for women in the sciences.) The mentoring aspect of the program was not repeated in the 1996 summer camp.

• We have some mechanisms in place for long term assessment: a part-time coordinator and computer database. We do not have enough money for long-term tracking of participants and analysis of survey results. It would be good to find out how many of the participants went on to pursue a college education with a major in SMET or a career in a SMET discipline. Few grants continue long enough to undertake this kind of follow-up.

SUCCESSFUL ELEMENTS:

• Participants evidently enjoyed their stay. They bonded with each other and with their workshop leaders to some extent.

• Feedback in the form of surveys collected before and after the camps indicates that they achieved their objectives, at least for the short term.

Expanding Your Horizons:

PROGRAM DESIGN:

Expanding Your Horizons conferences are sponsored nationwide by the Math Science Network. For a modest membership fee, institutions receive packets of information from the Math Science Network and other EYH sites. Some of the information is suitable for sharing with parents and teachers, some is suitable for participants, and some is useful for organizers.

EYH conferences were held at SIUC in the spring of 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996 and 1997; then moved to the fall for 1997 and 1998. The next EYH conference is scheduled for Nov. 20, 1999.

Our target audience for EYH has always been girls in grades 7 through 9 throughout the Southern Illinois region. This is a critical age for keeping females in the SMET pipeline.

The entire student center is booked a year ahead for each EYH conference. The size of the student center limits the number of participants to about 250 each year, plus parents and teachers. Typical EYH enrollment has run close to this figure.

Between 20 and 25 workshops are offered at our EYH conference. The majority of these are offered three times to different groups of participants during the day. Workshops are led by women faculty, graduate students and practicing scientists (such as veterinarians, physical therapists, technicians from the Illinois Crime Lab, etc.). For the Nov. 1998 EYH conference, 17 faculty/professional staff from SIUC, 5 faculty from regional community colleges, 5 SIUC graduate students and 9 professionals from the community served as leaders (or co-leaders) of workshops. Several of these were assisted by graduate and undergraduate students in their fields. Figures for earlier EYH conferences are comparable.

Each participant is assigned to three workshops during the day. The assignment is made based on preferences expressed on the participant’s application form. We are rarely able to match all the preferences of all the participants, but we generally manage two out of three preferences.

Small-group, hands-on activities are preferred over "lecture." Participants are often actually in a lab engaged in doing something rather than watching someone else do it. The conference co-directors, facilities chairperson and workshop leaders all volunteer their time. We also require a large, highly organized cadre of volunteers (between 35 and 40) to assist with registration, drive vans to workshops located some distance from the student center, escort groups of participants to and from labs in other buildings on campus, etc. About half the volunteers earn an extra credit point in their engineering class for serving in this capacity.

Parents and teachers are involved in one morning session on topics such as financing a college education, understanding teenage girls, etc. They then may observe two of the regular workshops. This was a new feature introduced with the 1998 EYH conference. It seems to be an attractive idea to most parents and teachers; registration from this group went up significantly in 1998. They were assigned to sessions where the leader had already indicated willingness to have parents/teachers present. At most 2 or 3 were assigned to any one workshop. Efforts were made NOT to assign parents to the same session as their daughter.

Evaluations are collected at the end of the day from the students, parents, teachers and workshop leaders. The results are overwhelmingly positive.

One civil service worker is employed (part-time) to manage the enormous amount of paperwork involved. She sends advance notices to the schools in the spring; types up the brochure information ready for Printing and Duplicating; sends the detailed mailing to the schools at the beginning of the fall term; maintains a database of all workshop leaders; maintains a separate database of all applicants; purchases the supplies requested by workshop leaders; does the necessary duplication of materials for all participant folders; prepares each participant’s folder with her individual schedule; sends out the requests for financial support; tallies and summarizes the evaluations, and much more!

Our EYH budget of approximately $5000 pays for our civil service worker, supplies, catering, room rentals and rental for two or three vans. About half of the funding comes from the $7.50 registration fee for each participant; the rest is contributed by numerous colleges and departments at SIUC as well as regional community colleges and school districts.

Over the years, EYH participants have come from all but the most distant two Southern Illinois counties and all but one of the Mississippi Delta counties in our region.

PITFALLS:

• Having workshop leaders volunteer their time and having a relatively small pool of women to draw on makes it more likely that our most enthusiastic leaders will eventually "burn out." We have increasingly accepted male workshop leaders, though we feel that female role models are a very important aspect of the conference.

• Although we have now gathered data from many EYH participants, we have no one with the time to process the data.

SUCCESSFUL ELEMENTS:

• Many students return for a second and even a third EYH conference.

• Over the years, we have established ties with the science and mathematics teachers at many middle and high schools in Southern Illinois. The response is generally much greater when we send information directly to such a teacher than when we send it to superintendents and principals.

• This is a relatively low-cost program.
• We emphasize small-group, hands-on activities.

PROGRAM DESIGN:

In some ways the GATEWAYS Workshops are extensions of EYH and in some ways they are small summer camps. The common denominator of all experiences is the hands-on time in small groups with role models. The GATEWAYS workshops are longer and more complex than those in EYH. This means that the number of young women we can take in a day is smaller, but they work more intensively. Workshop leaders have included both males and females from departments in the College of Engineering, the School of Medicine and the College of Science.

The 1998 GATEWAYS workshop was sponsored by NSF, with other funding coming from departments, schools and colleges at SIUC. The 1999 GATEWAYS workshop is being sponsored by the SIUC Chancellor’s Office, the SIUC Office for Minority Affairs and various departments, schools and colleges. Funding includes stipends for students and a modest honorarium for workshop leaders, as well as funds for supplies, duplication, postage, etc. A budget of $5,000 allows us to run the conference for 60 to 70 participants. At present, the GATEWAYS co-directors volunteer their time.

Data are collected from the participants at the beginning of the day and again at the end. Survey questions are intended to measure the participant’s confidence/comfort level in science, engineering, math and technology, to determine what they did and did not enjoy about the day and to collect information about their college and career plans.

Participants in the 1998 GATEWAYS were from 19 counties in Illinois including 16 Southern Illinois counties, and 12 Mississippi Delta Counties.

• The two GATEWAYS conferences we have conducted have fallen at the end of the academic year (end of May-beginning of June). While this has the advantage of not overlapping with a regular semester or summer school, it has the disadvantage of falling at the end of the SIUC fiscal year. The university’s budget structure is such that purchases and encumbered funds must be set aside and, for the most part, spent, by late April or early May. This advance planning consumes a lot of time and restricts our flexibility if workshop leaders have new ideas close to the workshop date.
• At the present level of funding, the conference co-directors are volunteering their time to do a great deal of clerical work and record keeping. This type of service by faculty members is barely recognized in the University’s reward system. We must seek funding to pay a civil service worker or a student worker to perform these tasks.

• Some local high schools are not out of classes yet when we run this workshop. While that means girls are in town and not on vacation, it means we run into many school activities and must plan around high school graduation.

• Students love to be paid to learn. Our ability to offer a stipend for the day (whether $50 or $100) increases registration and, perhaps more importantly, attendance. It also reduces the apprehension of a parent or student who might otherwise be losing a day at work at a part-time or a summer job.

• Students love to learn with their peers. This is also a strength of the EYH and other programs we offer. Young women who sit in classes with outspoken males and/or inexperienced teachers and/or who find themselves in a culture with few role models and many discouraging comments along the lines of "why would you want to do that?" find it enormously encouraging to attend workshops surrounded by 50, 100 or 200 of their peers who are just as excited and just as competent as they are.
• Small group, hands-on activities in the field or in the lab are the order of the day.

The intention of this activity was to provide some information and support for young women preparing projects for the regional science fair. On the first of two Saturdays devoted to the activity, participants divided into groups according to the area in which they were preparing a project. Group leaders discussed strategies for designing suitable experiments and made resource materials available. Participants were welcome to discuss their projects with group leaders as they developed them in the ensuing weeks. At the second meeting, after participants had started their experiments, discussion centered on how the experiments were going and the technical details of presenting results.

PITFALLS:

• Somehow, both of our scheduled days got hit by snow!
• Although participants seemed to enjoy the day, there were fewer applicants than expected.
• We were surprised that the second group of participants was almost completely different from the first. In the plan for the program, it was expected that more or less the same group of students would come both times.

We felt that this particular program was not successful in our area.

PROGRAM DESIGN:

Students from classes of a local high school science teacher participated in the Science Center Exhibit Building Days. The goal of each day was to construct two or three new exhibits for the regional science center. The students were divided into groups, one for each new exhibit. The science principles behind the exhibits were discussed; then the construction took place. At the end of the day, each group explained/demonstrated their newly constructed exhibit to the others.

For the first two building days, the students received extra credit in their science class. For the last one, the builders were members of the school’s science club who were paid a small stipend.

• Both male and female students worked together on the projects. It was all too easy for the males to monopolize the tools and assign the "gentler" task of making the signs to the females. It was also difficult to draw out the shy students.

• The activity was a good outreach into the community. Signs with the exhibits indicate that they were funded by WISE and built by volunteers.
• Many of the participating students did not know about the existence of the science center prior to this experience. Since then the center has moved into a much more prominent location at Carbondale’s University Mall.
• The science club students who were paid were treated professionally and learned that science can be profitable.

PROGRAM DESIGN:

The first two field trips for the Shagbark Council of the GSUSA were funded through our NSF grant. The 1999 trip was supported through a small internal grant from the University Women’s Professional Advancement, with matching funds from the College of Engineering, the College of Science and the School of Medicine. The GSUSA organizes the trips the St. Louis Science Center, one of the largest such centers in the country. The effect of underwriting part of the cost of the trip was to reduce costs from $25 to under $10 for each participant. Participation in the trip more than doubled when these funds became available. The GSUSA does all the planning for the trip.

This activity reaches the Grade 4-6 age group.

• It is more difficult to collect data since we are not the primary organizers of the trip.

• This is another excellent outreach into the entire Southern Illinois region (much appreciated by the parents and scout leaders).

• Our activities represent a sustained collaboration between the College of Engineering, the School of Medicine and the College of Science in the effort to increase the recruitment and retention of women in SMET. We attribute some of the success of our programs to the support of department chairs, college deans and higher levels of the SIUC administration.
• Most of these activities can be duplicated or adapted for use at other institutions, whether they serve a rural or an urban region.
• Worthwhile activities do not necessarily have to be expensive. However, we would love to find out whether the very expensive two-week summer camp experience has a significantly greater impact in the long run.
• Most activities had only female participants and mostly female leaders. The advantage to female only groups is that the females will necessarily have a hands-on experience. The disadvantage to female-only groups is that they will necessarily be extra-curricular for students in public schools, and extra-curricular activities are limited by time and money for all involved.
• Data have been collected from hundreds of participants. Some of it has been entered into a central database; some has not. There is now a need to collect follow-up data from as many participants as possible and to process the data for the "big picture."

REFERENCES

[1] J. Sharpe, S. Desai, J. Hetherington, "Evaluation of a Support Network In Southern Illinois for Women and Girls Interested in Science, Engineering, and Math," Applied research Consultants, Department of Psychology, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, August 1996.