Broadening participation of female students in STEM: Significant outcomes in less than one year

Abstract

The WomenTech Educators (WTE) Online Training has cracked the code to broadening participation of female students in STEM in as little as a semester. Six of seven colleges participating in the Spring 2015 WTE Online Training reported successful outcomes in only eight months: Five of seven colleges started enrolling an average of 4.8 more female students in their targeted STEM courses and six of seven colleges increased female retention from an average baseline of 58 percent to 100 percent. The WTE Online Training was developed and introduced in 2012 during the NSF-funded CalWomenTech Scale Up (CWTSU) Project (NSF # 1102996; June 2011-May 2016) and further disseminated during the National Online WomenTech (NOW) Project (NSF# 1400531; August 2014-July 2017). It is the WTE Online Training's targeted, data-driven approach that helps institutions achieve successful outcomes in a short time period.