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Engagement in Practice: Infusing the STEM Pipeline Through Community Engaged Learning

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Conference

2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Salt Lake City, Utah

Publication Date

June 23, 2018

Start Date

June 23, 2018

End Date

July 27, 2018

Conference Session

Engagement in Practice: Engaging the Community through Educational Outreach

Tagged Division

Community Engagement Division

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

8

DOI

10.18260/1-2--30385

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/30385

Download Count

528

Paper Authors

biography

Sara Jordan-Bloch Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University

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Sara Jordan-Bloch is a sociologist and the Director of Leadership Research and Programs at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University. She is a core team member of the Voice & Influence program, designed to help men and women be as effective as possible and create workplaces where all people can thrive. Jordan-Bloch also leads the Seeds of Change initiative, which aims to provide young women and girls with frameworks, knowledge, and skills to find and strengthen their own voice and to navigate critical transitions such as starting college and entering the workforce. Jordan-Bloch's scholarly research centers on the intersection of social psychology and education, and current projects include work on: the perception of mattering as a mechanism in teacher-student relationships, the relational context of cohort-based learning, and how gender inequality is experienced and understood during critical transitions for young women. Jordan-Bloch received her B.A. in sociology from Brown University and her Ph.D. in sociology from Stanford University.

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biography

Shoshanah Cohen Stanford University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-9654-3162

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Shoshanah Cohen is the Director of Community Engaged Learning for Engineering at Stanford University. She holds a BS in Industrial Engineering from Stanford, an MA in Technology Strategy from Boston University, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She has more than 20 years of industry experience managing complex supply chain projects; her teaching focuses on experiential project-based operations courses and community engagement.

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Abstract

This year, our Research Institute has launched a new initiative to address the glaring underrepresentation of girls and women in STEM – science, technology, engineering, and mathematics - fields. Motivated by the critical imperative of better understanding and addressing the gender biases that inhere early on in the STEM pipeline, this initiative aims to provide innovative training and support to young women in STEM as they transition through high school and college to successful technology careers. This initiative is distinct from traditional pipeline projects because it does not focus on the technical skills and education of STEM. Instead, the project takes an interdisciplinary approach to STEM education, infusing students’ technical training with leadership training through a lens of gender inequality - bringing together key components of feminist pedagogy, community engaged learning, and experiential education to create a transformational learning experience. This is achieved by employing three core strategies: research-based education, a train-the-trainer model, and cohort-based learning. Our initiative launched this fall with approximately 100 participants: 20 undergraduate student leaders focusing on or interested in STEM, paired to co-lead 10 high school partner groups (each with 6-8 students). Our high school partnerships are with groups or organizations focused on STEM and vary in their context of socioeconomic advantage and learning setting (e.g. in-school and after-school). We are working in close partnership with our University’s Center for Public Service and Office of Community Engaged Learning to build both an educational program and research agenda that emphasize the value of reciprocity, partnership, reflection, evaluation, and respect for diversity. In this paper, we present the lessons learned from our pilot year, including: the results from our feasibility evaluation, an assessment of our partnership model, and our approach to scaling. Assessment of the students and their progress is ongoing.

Jordan-Bloch, S., & Cohen, S. (2018, June), Engagement in Practice: Infusing the STEM Pipeline Through Community Engaged Learning Paper presented at 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--30385

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