FLIGHT OF FANCY
"Science: It's a Girl Thing" provides girls with an opportunity to experience experimental science.
Written by Martha Hise
Matryoshka, the handmade, wooden Russian nesting dolls in which a larger doll contains other figurines nestled inside one another, are symbolically a beautiful metaphor of the idea of mentoring. A handing down of wisdom, experience and opportunities by established professionals to younger individuals, the process of mentoring is especially important for women, as research shows. When young girls are mentored by older women, their imaginations rise into a flight of fancy, and they believe they can do anything they set their minds to.
Through mentoring and public school outreach programs at Texas Tech University, young students have the opportunity – and for many of them, their first chance – to experience being on a university campus and dreaming of a higher education for themselves. One of the most important of these programs is “Science: It’s a Girl Thing,” which addresses the current problem of under-representation of women in the science, engineering and technology fields by providing girls entering the fifth through 11th grades with an opportunity to experience experimental science first-hand and meet and interact with working women scientists and engineers. The National Council for Research on Women 2001 report, titled “Balancing the Equation: Where are Women and Girls in Science, Engineering and Technology?” states: “As in other aspects of girls' lives in recent years, the record of change in schooling is mixed. Girls' performance has improved in math (on standardized tests), but not in science. Girls say that they like these subjects less than do boys and that they have less confidence in their abilities in these areas.”
The organizers of “Science: It’s A Girl Thing” – hosted for the past three years by the Institute for the Development and Enrichment of Advanced Learners, the Women’s Studies Program, and the Texas Tech Howard Hughes Medical Institute Program – are dedicated to providing scholarships for half of the 300 camp attendees, embracing those students who come from families that fall under federal low-income guidelines and who often will be first-generation college students. Attending this camp is the first experience with a college or university for many girls; this exposure transforms the notion of going to college into a tangible goal. The program strives to provide girls with confidence to pursue science, spark their interest in science careers and demonstrate to them by example that a career in science is attainable for women.
Participants from throughout the West Texas region, other areas of Texas and Eastern New Mexico visit the Texas Tech campus for four days, living and eating in the residence halls and spending their days in the laboratories of their choice, under the direction of faculty and graduate students from various departments. More than 70 Texas Tech faculty volunteer their teaching time, exposing the girls to as many scientific disciplines as possible. These efforts are intended to build confidence in these young girls, often having the effect of helping them to gain self-assurance and to overcome their fears about raising their hands in class and asking questions.
Through “Science: It’s A Girl Thing,” organizers at Texas Tech are addressing the educational issue of the dearth of female science and engineering faculty throughout the country’s university campuses by demonstrating to these young women that they can go to college and by recruiting girls to science.
For one of the classes focusing on science education, faculty from the College of Education helped their undergraduate students create a science education curriculum. The university’s future female science teachers then give lessons to middle-grade female students, who, in turn, teach science to elementary-aged girls. On the last class day, the faculty, college students and the campers visit the Lubbock YWCA, where seventh and eighth graders teach fourth graders who are in the YWCA’s summer program. All along this continuum of mentoring and nurturing, the message is enforced that science comes in many forms, has many techniques and involves many successful women.
Like the matryoshka, with the larger dolls holding the smaller figurines, the women and girls involved in “Science: It’s A Girl Thing” fit together, in levels of experience, and are held together through the process of mentorship, like the Russian nesting dolls, a puzzle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
Martha Hise has been the director of the Institute for the Development and Enrichment of Advanced Learners (IDEAL) since 1995.
Story produced by the Office of Communications and Marketing, 806-742-2136
Photo by Melissa Frazier
Web layout by Kristen DeLisle