New Collaborative Aims to Get Girls into STEM

Molding STEM education for women.


Mary Margaret Small, Coordinator of the North Country STEM Network (left), & civil engineering student Lauren Hall attend the STEAM Girls Collaborative Kick-Off.

A collaborative has grown out of New York and Clarkson University to connect and promote women in STEAM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math). This STEAM Girls Collaborative was launched during a conference held on October 25th at the HudsonValley Community College’s TEC-SMART in New York.

The Conference gathered representatives from the state of New York to discuss how to establish new resources and collaborations that will bring girls into STEM careers. The conference and collaborative is open to all organizations and individuals from school administrators and engineers to educators and University staff.

Two of the conference’s representatives include Mary Margaret Small, Coordinator of the North Country STEM Network and civil engineering student Lauren Hall. The two will work on a panel that will discuss what women enjoy about their STEM careers and educations.

“If we look at where jobs of the future are that will allow an individual to have a middle class or upper-middle class existence, they’re in the STEM disciplines,” said Small. “I think it’s important to do everything we can to encourage our young women to prepare themselves to enter the work world.”

Small added that research often shows that women wish to work in fields that help humanity. Unfortunately, these potential students don’t see STEM disciplines as a method to improve lives. Therefore to be more inclusive, the perception of engineering and STEM must change. Through the use of summer camps and weekend activities, these girls will be able to experience and change their perception of STEM.

“The goal of engineering is to solve the problems of humanity. We need to make that connection for girls,” Small said. “If we’re not using the skills and talents of that population, we’re not serving humanity as a whole.”

To further extend STEM to women, Clarkson University and the NY STEAM Girls Collaborative will provide grants through local STEM projects.

Summary Clarkson University.

Written by

Shawn Wasserman

For over 10 years, Shawn Wasserman has informed, inspired and engaged the engineering community through online content. As a senior writer at WTWH media, he produces branded content to help engineers streamline their operations via new tools, technologies and software. While a senior editor at Engineering.com, Shawn wrote stories about CAE, simulation, PLM, CAD, IoT, AI and more. During his time as the blog manager at Ansys, Shawn produced content featuring stories, tips, tricks and interesting use cases for CAE technologies. Shawn holds a master’s degree in Bioengineering from the University of Guelph and an undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Waterloo.