ADVANCE-ENG Girls To Women: An innovative engineering faculty-student mentoring summit for underrepresented minority (URM) girls and their mothers

Abstract

As a culturally relevant educational intervention, the ADVANCE-ENG Girls to Women Summit included over 70 underrepresented minority (URM) girls and their mothers (or other adult caregivers) to attend a day of engineering career exploration while interacting with over 60 URM women engineering professors from around the United States. The day was informative, empowering and encouraging, providing an opportunity for middle school girls to meet real women of color who are engineering professors, real women who at one time were girls making a critical move towards an engineering career. The prevailing Summit goal was to attract girls at a critical stage in the K-12 pipeline to engineering careers. The two-day event enabled the girls to take the time to envision themselves in the future, just like the faculty present, and for daughters and mothers/caregivers to connect or re-connect, forging an alliance to sustain the mothers/caregivers through the challenges they will face as their daughters become future women in engineering. A combination of faculty motivational speeches, a three-session rotation through hands-on activities (e.g., making lip gloss) and interactive career sessions culminated in a gala dinner for the girls, faculty/student/community volunteers, and special guests. The girls had continuous interaction with URM women engineering college students as role models throughout the event. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2010.