Just Announced! Women in STEM Summit Speakers

At the Women in STEM Summit, taking place October 22 at Bentley University, you will have the opportunity to make one-to-one connections with potential employees, feed the pipelines for your mentoring and internship programs, maximize ROI of STEM investments, increase STEM retention rates, as well as promote your internal initiatives in support of women in the workplace.

Women in STEM Summit

October 22, 2015

Boston, MA

We are excited to introduce the major players, influencers and inspirers in the Northeast that have joined our speaking faculty to engage in discussion, debate the issues and help you make a difference.

Hear from and collaborate with the 2015 Women in STEM Summit speakers:

• Amy Van Kirk, Director, University Relations, Talent Acquisition, PAREXEL International
• Anne-Marie Dorning, Founding Director, Olin College of Engineering
• Betsy Myers, Director, Human Resources, Center for Women and Business, Bentley University
• Cecily Kovatch, Sr. Director Ash Reuse Applications & Innovation, Covanta
• Claire Duggan, Director for Programs and Operations, The Center for STEM Education, Northeastern University
• Courtney Tanenbaum, Senior Researcher, American Institutes for Research
• Tiana Veldwisch, Technical Marketing Manager, Daktari Diagnostics
• Denise A. Sabolcik, Vice President, Application Development, FedEx Services

• Janice Mazzallo, Executive Vice President and CHRO, PeoplesBank
• John Brooks, President and CEO, Joslin Diabetes Center
• Julie Silard Kantor, Chief Partnership Officer, STEMconnector MillionWomenMentors
• Lisa Freed, P.E., LEED AP, STEM Program Manager, iRobot
• Sally Phelps, Olin Career Center Director, Olin College of Engineering
• Susan Vroman, Organizational Effectiveness Advisor, SmartPak
• Yvonne M. Spicer, Ed.D, DTE, Vice President of Advocacy & Educational Partnerships, National Center for Technological Literacy®, Museum of Science, Boston

Click here to view the complete agenda: http://bit.ly/1VdZ0nv

Register today to secure your seat! Each registration sponsors the attendance of students.  Invest in the future women of the industry, while increasing your organizations long-term competitive advantage.

You get $100 off the current rate when you use code WISBL. For more information or to register, click here: http://bit.ly/1VdZ0nv

Cheers,

The Women in STEM Summit Team

@WISSummit

#WISExchange15

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My Story/My Advice: Julia Curran

This My Story/My Advice post features Julia Curran, a woman in STEM who works at Takeda Oncology. The My Story/My Advice project, brought to you by The Women in STEM Summit, which highlights women in STEM that are persisting in STEM fields and making a difference. It also gives their personal advice to the next generation of young women looking for encouragement to persist in STEM.

Julia’s Story:

I found early on that I was passionate about the life sciences. I asked my parents for a lab coat and a microscope for my 9th birthday. In my 5th grade yearbook I wrote that as my future career, I wanted to find the cure to cancer and it turns out that I now work at a company that aspires to cure cancer. I have always been passionate about the life sciences and having seen people in my life affected by cancer as so many do, I was motivated to help oncology patients which is what drove me to work in an oncology research lab in college and now work at Takeda Oncology.

Julia’s Advice:

I recently read a National Geographic article on why it’s crucial to get more women into science and one thing that struck me about the article was how the author stated how his daughter of 13 years is interested in math and science and he says “it hasn’t occurred to her yet that its unusual but I know in the next couple of years it will.” He goes on to say “I know as time goes on, she’ll feel increasingly lonely as a girl who is interested in math and science-and be at risk of narrowing her choices before finding out how far she could have gone.”

This resonated with me because I found early on that I was passionate about the life sciences and as a young girl, I never felt lonely or unusual being involved in the science. I have been fortunate to have strong role models throughout my education as well as parents who have tremendously supported my career path. My advice is to find a mentor and to surround yourself with people that will support you and encourage you to pursue your interests! I found my first STEM role model in my middle school science teacher who not only encouraged me but also challenged me and supported me to pursue more advanced scientific work.

Register for the upcoming Women in STEM Summit taking place October 22, 2015 in Boston, MA. The event brings together companies struggling to fill their STEM job pipelines with female college students pursuing STEM degrees. The summit is designed to facilitate closing the gap between corporate needs for a STEM-enabled workforce and student questions about job prospects that align their passion with the needs of corporate America. For more information or to register, click here: http://bit.ly/1hZFME2

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Is Confidence the Reason Women are the Minority in STEM Fields?

A recent study has found that women often fail to do as well in a corporate environment due to a lack of confidence in their own abilities. This ties in closely with the fact that there is a distinct gender gap in STEM fields as it has been found that women make up only 24 percent of STEM professions.

From this, a study looked into how male and female college students view their own abilities. There was found to be a gender gap in terms of confidence levels in the STEM fields and in particular computer science. This study, carried out by Piazza, created a social learning platform where students and teachers could ask questions (anonymously if they wanted) and answered by fellow students. Piazza analyzed two million questions by almost one million students from US and Canadian schools over four semesters. The confidence gap was defined as the percentage difference between the average number of questions answered by female and male students. The gap for computer sciences showed women answered 37 percent less than men and for the rest of the STEM subject’s women were 18 percent fewer.

The difference in levels was found to be biggest at the top computer science programs – females at Carnegie Mellon University answered 62 percent less than males whilst at Cornell, Stanford and Harvard there were 60 percent, 49 percent and 39 percent differences again in favor of the males. The gaps at slightly smaller institutions were a lot smaller and in the cases of Boston University and Caltech the females had higher percentages with three percent higher at Boston and 22 percent higher at Caltech.

This leads me to believe that the reason behind the disparity in confidence levels comes from the fact that STEM fields and in particular computer science are still boys clubs and this stems from college level. The top level courses themselves are still male dominated and by teachers as well as students. The top universities were found to have 14 percent female undergraduate degrees awarded in computer science.

The disparity means females are less likely to be able to find friends to help with work and mentoring as the males tend to group together. Male teachers as well are more likely to bond with male students as they will have also worked or studied in a male dominated environment. Studies have also shown that males are also more likely to receive more positive classroom attention from teachers than females.  It is similar in other courses such as business where it is found at Harvard Business School between 2006 and 2007 a third of the junior female faculty left. Trends like this show that females have less female mentoring so often feel excluded and intimidated. Another study shows that at Carnegie 53 percent of male college freshmen rated themselves as highly prepared for their computer science exams whilst zero percent of females said the same. However at the end of the year 86 percent of the females interviewed received A or B grades which shows the extreme difference in confidence levels despite actually having no need to be worried.  

From this evidence it is not surprising that females feel less confident to firstly go into these professions or courses where they are the minority and secondly when there, they are less likely to want to speak up. If there is less of a social stigma surrounding these STEM fields being for men then maybe there would be a positive change in more women taking up STEM professions and succeeding. 

About the Author: Harry Kempe, a marketing intern at IIR USA, who works on various aspects of the industry including social media, marketing analysis and media. He is a recent graduate of Newcastle University who previously worked for EMAP Ltd. and WGSN as a marketing assistant on events such as the World Architecture Festival, World Retail Congress and Global Fashion Awards. He can be reached at hkempe@IIRUSA.com.

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