Remote Mentoring Young Girls in STEM through MAGIC

Ritu Khare (GetMagic)

Esha Sahai (MIT)

Ira Pramanick (Google Inc.)

[email protected]

MIT LINC June 18

2013

Remote Mentoring

Young Females in STEM

Through MAGIC

Motivation

• Gender Stratification and Limited Participation

– Women ONLY 24% of the STEM workforce in the US (American

Community Survey 2009)

– NOT due to lack of talent but due to discouraging societal attitudes and unique challenges (Khoja et al. 2013, Gorman et al., 2010)

• More women in workforce could raise GDP by 5% (Hewlett, 2012)

– Establish a nation-wide mentoring system that engages, motivates, and inspires young females toward STEM subjects in a personalized manner Henneberger et al. 2012)

Explores a remote mentoring approach to STEM mentoring

Why Remote Mentoring?

• Advantages

– Accessibility

– Personalization

– Efficiency

Only way to scale nation-wide and offer STEM

mentoring to girls from all segments of society

Goals of this Study

Introduce MAGIC

• Get More Active Girls in Computing!

• Nationwide matching bridge between – Girls interested in STEM topics

– Women with successful technology & computing careers

Assess Remote Mentoring

• We present the first data on remote mentoring of young females in STEM – 5-year retrospective statistical

analysis

– Mentoring relationships across at 7 US states

– 23 girls from 3 different types of schools

MAGIC: Organizational Settings

• Structure – Core-Team – Board Members – Mentors

• Mentoring Philosophy – One-on-one mentoring – MAGIC establishes each mentor-mentee pair – Mentoring Sessions – Noteworthy final projects

• Mobile app development • Tic-tac-toe • Website Development • Google SketchUp based building design

Methodology and Data

• Data on remote mentoring:2008-2013

• Data Collection Points

– Mentors and Mentees

– School

– Mentor-mentee

• Collected by the core team in a narrative fashion

• Anonymized before sharing with the key investigators of this study

Entity Total

MAGIC Remote Mentors 16

Participating Schools 12

MAGIC Mentors 23

MAGIC Pairs 23

6

Results: MAGIC Mentors (Total 16)

• Highest academic degrees finished – 9 doctorates, 5 masters, & 2 bachelors

• During recruitment, the candidates expressed strong interest in inspiring more girls to pursue STEM and giving back to the society and scientific community

Results: MAGIC Mentees (Total 23)

• Partnership: 8 schools (5 public, 2 private, 1 charter), located in CA and MA

• Few mentees belong to four other schools that are not officially associated with MAGIC, but allow student-level participation

Results: Remote Mentoring Activities

• Distribution of Projects – Computational based: 44%

– Game/Animation/Web: 36%

– Non-programming: 20%

Results: Remote Mentoring Challenges

• At least 7 mentees and 7 mentors reported no challenges

• All the pairs successfully dealt with the challenges either on their own or with support from the core team

Results: Impact on Remote Mentoring

• Mentors – Positive and educational experience – Enjoyed their relationship with the young mentees – 6 offered assistance in MAGIC core and administrative activities

and expressed interest in becoming board members – 3 did not find the relationship rewarding due to the lack of

mentees’ commitment and enthusiasm

Discussion: Organizational Outcomes

• Accessibility – Associations with 3 different types of schools to reach out to

different societal sections

– Most mentors located in California and Massachusetts

– Majority of MAGIC core & board members reside in CA and MA

– Matched mentees and mentors across 7 different US states

• Personalization – Mentees:

• Different familial backgrounds

• Diverse set of expectations

–MAGIC offered tailored services • Variety of STEM skills (programming, creative, Web, conceptual)

• Variety of projects (technical and interpersonal)

Discussion: Organizational Outcomes

• Plan for Growth

– Stayed small for first few years

– Tens of schools and hundreds of mentees in the next five years

– Challenge

• Replicating the energy and dedication of the small board of directors

– Partnerships with universities, national labs, and companies

Discussion: Lessons Learnt • Popular communication tools

– Skype, Google Hangout, and phone

• Top learning choices

– Programming, topic-based learning, and creative skills

• Popular project choices

– Computational and game projects, and shadowing activities

• Mentors and mentees perceived different set of challenges. – Mentees: Time management and logistics – Mentors: delivery of content and social challenges

• Remote mentoring made a positive impact – Mentees’ lives – Building skills and self confidence – Several mentees gained scientific visibility and significant career awareness

Conclusions and Future Work

• Introduced our unique organization, MAGIC

– Remotely yet closely engages girls to pursue STEM

– Highly personalized services

– Most pressing concern

• Recruiting mentors and mentees who have the passion, time, and energy to help realize the vision of MAGIC

• Data-driven perception on remote mentoring young females in STEM

Conclusions and Future Work

• Limitations

– Majority of the mentoring projects focused on computer programming due to the backgrounds of our current mentors

– Conduct the study with increased numbers of pairs

– Diversify the mentees’ locations and interests

– Study correlation between the challenges faced and the mentoring outcomes

Acknowledgements

• Participating Schools

• MAGIC Mentees and Parents

• MAGIC Mentors

• Sponsors (Google, Teradata, and personal donors)