Women: Women's Outreach In Materials, Energy, and Nanobiotechnology

WOMEN: Women's Outreach in Materials, Energy, and Nanobiotechnology

Susan Daniel

School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853

For the past two years, the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell University organized and hosted a successful pilot outreach event, called WOMEN (Women's Outreach in Materials, Energy, and Nanobiotechnology), to foster rural tenth-grade girls interest in STEM and introduce their parents to the university and career options for their daughters. Twenty families visited our campus for the day. Students ran short experiments or activities designed and organized by graduate students (Figure 1) while their parents learned about engineering careers and planning for college. In the second year, we also integrated a student-parent laboratory module, based on feedback from parent surveys in the prior year. We received overwhelmingly positive feedback on the program from parents and student participants in both years. All parents said they would attend this kind of event again and felt that it broadened their view of engineering. Parents commented that the information provided gave them an important early start in planning for college and knowing how to encourage their daughters to plan for a technical career. All 20 students felt that the program broadened their view of engineering and 17/20 stated they would consider an engineering career after the program. In this paper, I will provide an overview of the entire program, highlight several experiments we ran with the students and parents, and discuss detailed feedback from students and parents. 

Figure 1. WOMEN outreach program hosted by the Cornell School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. (A) Graduate students present the objectives of the parent-student lab to the families. (B) Parents and students engaging in the joint activity. (C) A mother-daughter team at work. (D) A student enjoying the activity.