Women's Initiative
The MIT Women’s Initiative program seeks to increase the number of women enrolled in engineering majors by educating middle and high school girls nationwide through presentations made by MIT women students.
The Women’s Initiative program emphasizes the importance of creating personalized interactions between school-aged women and college women. School-aged students can identify more closely with college students than with college recruiters and industry professionals. The enthusiasm shown by MIT women reveals a new and different side of engineering to younger girls.
Our primary objectives are to…
- Encourage school aged girls to pursue studies and careers in engineering.
- Empower and motivate high school girls to take the most challenging math and science courses in high school.
- Expose students to the field of engineering and challenge its common stereotypes.
- Educate and share experiences with other institutions and groups who wish to start similar programs.
Last year, we visited well over 50 high schools and middle schools in
9 different districts throughout the country, including Sitka/Juneau,
AK, Baton Rouge, LA,
San Francisco, CA, Cupertino, CA, Scottsdale, AZ, Miami, FL, Portland,
OR, Washington, DC, and many schools in the greater Boston area extending
to Nashua, NH. Our presenters reached thousands of students and
teachers and made lasting impressions everywhere.
Encouraging more women to get into the engineering fields is important to the long term competitiveness of our nation. Statistics show that in the future, there will not be enough scientists and engineers to fill the available positions in industry and academia. The National Science Board warns, "If action is not taken now to change these trends, we could reach 2020 and find that the ability of U.S. research and education institutions to regenerate has been damaged and that their preeminence has been lost to other areas of the world." The board observes that the people entering the workforce today with graduate degrees made the decision to study mathematics and science back in middle school. Thus it is very important to improve the image of engineers to our middle school and high school girls and to encourage them to pursue these fields.
To learn more about how to sponsor our program, come here.
To learn more about the presentations, come here.
