All across the board educators, advisors, counselors and industry leaders are increasingly voicing a real and ever-present challenge of recruiting and retaining women in STEM careers. To address some of these concerns, and to start a platform for an open dialogue, FLATE—NSF Center of Excellence in Advanced Technological Education presented a workshop hosted by St. John River State College (SJRSC), Orange Park Campus in Orange Park, FL.  The professional development workshop, “Recruiting Girls for STEM Pathways”, featured best practices for educators, recruiters, counselors, advisors, and anyone interested in promoting STEM careers to women and girls.

Participants who attended the workshop had the opportunity to interact with a panel of two STEM female experts and one female STEM student, explored STEM based resources, shared current female recruitment practices and engaged in teamwork to develop strategic action plans.  The action plans included both short and long-term goals to recruit and retain female STEM programs.

Based on a post survey conducted by FLATE, over 95% of participants who responded the survey (22 out of 25) rated good and/or excellent their satisfaction with the overall professional development value provided during the “Women in STEM-Career Pathways Recruitment and Retention workshop”.  The same percentage of responses indicated that they are planning to use the information presented, will recommend this type of workshop to other colleagues, and agreed and/or strongly agreed that the workshop is an effective way to promote the importance of women in STEM career pathways recruitment and retention. Nearly 90% of people surveyed also agreed and/or strongly agreed that the STEM professional panel was engaging and provided important advice regarding female recruitment and retention. Approximately 95% of responses also agreed and/or strongly agreed the Round Robin and group session provided a big picture of current practices and potential action plan to improve the recruitment and retention of females in their programs.

Comments from Participants:

For more details about the workshop including the presentations, please visit FLATE’s wiki presentation page, or contact Marilyn Barger at barger@fl-ate.org  For additional information related resources visit www.fl-ate.org and www.madeinflorida.org.