National Mentoring Month

Two hundred middle and high school students in the Washington, DC area with teachers, scientists, and experts to increase their motivation, achievement, and exposure to STEM careers and disciplines through game design, mentoring, and collaboration.

Two successive MESA cohorts totaling 80 local underrepresented high school students take a one-year introductory computer game programming course at the university and at their high school, along with mentoring and other activities.

This collaborative project is conducting a research study to delineate the effective components of mentoring for underrepresented and non-underrepresented students in STEM, utilizing a robotics educational program.

This project will develop a suite of digital tools designed to support positive messaging around skill-based education and careers and to improve mentors' communication with middle school-aged youth mentees. Maintaining U.S. economic advantage requires attracting talent to high-growth, high-demand skill-based, STEM-related careers that are traditionally attained through Career and Technical Education (CTE). Replacing old negative perceptions with new, more accurate messages about CTE and then reaching youth with these messages before high school is essential. Career-focused mentoring is a vehicle for delivering these messages and supporting youth exploration of CTE as a possible path for their own lives.

Twin Cities Public Television project on Gender Equitable Teaching Practices in Career and Technical Education Pathways for High School Girls is designed to help career and technical education educators and guidance counselors recruit and retain more high school girls from diverse backgrounds in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) pathways, specifically in technology and engineering.

This project will seek to better understand and advance the awareness and persistence toward STEM-related careers by middle and high school students with visual impairments (VI). The project will accomplish these goals by providing VI students with opportunities for accessible project-based learning and mentorship from a VI professional working in a STEM field.

Approximately 100 underrepresented students in Houston, TX are engaged in hands-on, out-of-school STEM projects that focus on the engineering design process through mentorship from underrepresented STEM undergraduates

This project will prepare high-achieving high school students for courses in engineering. Through the Engineering WINS (EngWINS) program, the project will develop the capabilities of working engineers and faculty to serve as mentors in a new initiative to develop interest, self-efficacy, and persistence in engineering careers among urban high school women.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is quickly becoming ubiquitous in STEM and across industries, and the education field is grappling with how best to teach AI concepts to K12 audiences. Simultaneously, the AI professional community suffers from a lack of diversity that excludes women and people of color from a dynamic section of the economy and a path for upward mobility. Equally important, a lack of diverse perspectives can risk automating discriminatory practices based on biased algorithms and biased data sets.

The Connected Spaces (C/S) project will research and develop a technological toolkit and design framework designed to connect youth makers with peers, mentors, and technical assistance.

The Connected Spaces (C/S) project will research and develop a technological toolkit and design framework designed to connect youth makers with peers, mentors, and technical assistance.

There is a clear need for a diverse, skilled, and culturally competent science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and information and communications technology (ICT) workforce. Further, the STEM/ICT workforce increasingly recognizes that solutions to the world’s most pressing problems must be developed collaboratively on a global level.

Today’s technology-based global economy places a high premium on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education. Educators committed to increasing the interest and achievement of females in engineering struggle to find appropriate resources. The Gender and Science Digital Library (GSDL) from Education Development Center, Inc., (EDC) is a unique on-line collection of exemplary resources aimed at encouraging girls and women to pursue science and engineering education and careers.

This paper describes the journey of a group of university students as they worked with underserved middle school students as mentors in a STEM-based afterschool program. Design thinking provided a frame within which students learned how to be mentors, how to create user-centered learning experiences, and how to share their experiences as developing STEM professionals with middle school students.

Less than 30% of students enrolled in the U.S. are proficient in science or mathematics. The landscape becomes more troubling among students who traditionally are underrepresented in STEM. For instance, in 2015, fourth grade Black students scored on average 24 points lower than their White counterparts, and 35 points lower than their Asian American counterparts. When data are disaggregated further by sex, underrepresented males, Black males in particular, underperform Black girls on fourth grade mathematics assessment.

The purpose of this research study is to examine the motivations of undergraduate students, graduate students, and teaching professionals to serve as mentors for elementary school-aged kids participating in the Summer Engineering Experiences for Kids (SEEK) program hosted by the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE).