Girls’ interest in engineering spikes

November 6, 2015

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This year there has been a spike in the number of girls taking science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) classes, but this number is still much lower than the number of boys in these classes.

“Typically it’s 90 percent or more boys,” said mathematics and computer science teacher Steve Ehren. “I probably have more girls this year than I had the prior seven years combined.”

I probably have more girls this year than I had the prior seven years combined.

— Steve Ehern

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Principles of Engineering (POE) teacher Dominic Audia said, “We struggled back in 2007 when we started our Project Lead the Way program and it was predominantly boys, but now it’s about 20 percent [girls].”

Project Lead the Way is a national organization that provides classes for high schoolers that are interested in STEM careers. Audia’s POE class gives high school students the chance to build rockets, design and program robots, experiment with circuitry and electronics, create hydrogen fuel cell cars and much more.

Encouraging girls to join STEM classes has proved to be problematic to some teachers. Classes like Ehren’s computer science have low enrollment so instead of focusing on persuading girls to take these classes, these teachers are persuading anyone with an interest, girl or not.

It’s mainly math and science teachers who are promoting STEM classes to students and some seem to be taking notice and enrolling.

“Teachers are always saying [to] join STEM classes,” said POE student Bethany Schillinger ’17.

Schillinger was not convinced to take the class by teachers, but by friends.

“[Teachers] don’t influence me as much as my friends do, so it’s mostly my friends who convinced me to join the class,” Schillinger said.

Encouragement also comes from parents who influence their children to take these classes because of all the opportunities for jobs in these fields.

“My mom said POE can help you more in life, so I decided to go with that,” said Rachel Ding ’19.

At the junior high level, girls are offered the opportunity to attend a STEM day which hooks some students, while others take the class simply because they want to try something new.

“I thought Applied Tech was really interesting in eighth grade. I saw Principles of Engineering on the list of classes I could take and thought I should try it out. Engineering has always interested me, but I’ve never really taken steps to educate myself on it before I took this class,” said Emma Koch ’19.

Science and engineering teachers are very aware that much more boys take their classes than girls so to encourage girls to continue participating, teachers make sure their projects appeal to both genders.

“I’m cognizant of the fact that girls tend not to take computer science, so the projects that I assign in class are gender neutral,” Ehren said.

The number of job openings in the workforce for STEM-related jobs is very high, especially for women, because of the gender imbalance. Many more men get degrees and work in science and engineering than women do so taking a STEM class provides students with the opportunity to learn more about an area where they would not have to compete because of limited job availability.

“[If] you’re looking for an area where there’s going to be a lot of job openings, without a doubt computer science would be the place,” said Ehren. “If you have a degree in computer science or a minor in computer science, you’re going to be a lot more marketable in any field that you go into.”