Last year, The Huffington Post started the HuffPost Girls in STEM Mentorship Program to match up more than 500 girls with mentors in science and engineering. The news publication has created the Girls in STEM webpage to chronicle the mentorship program and promote discussion on how to attract and keep girls in STEM. The webpage includes featured blog posts, Twitter feed and articles. An article that struck a chord with me is “This is what Inspires Girls in STEM,” which includes quotes from college-age women. Many of the young women quoted want to enter a STEM career for altruistic reasons or because they are fascinated by nature and/or technology. What happens to all that enthusiasm, causing female undergraduates to leave STEM in greater numbers than males? Contributing authors to HuffPost Girls in STEM have various answers to that question and their opinions are worth monitoring as librarians consider how to encourage more young women to stay in STEM majors. Photo attribution: Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day 2012, Argonne National Laboratory. No changes were made to this image.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

top