Evaluation Of Summer Enrichment Programs For Women Students

In spite of the fact that in the last two decades both boys and girls’ participation in high school mathematics and science courses has generally increased and more girls are taking advanced mathematics and science courses in high school, women are not an equitable segment of the STEM workforce. The status of women in the workforce shows females still occupy stereotypical roles, such as secretaries, nurses and elementary school teachers. Much has been done to address the needs of women and girls in STEM areas. Programs, especially summer programs, have been implemented that are designed to encourage female students to pursue STEM careers and address their attitudes towards such fields. However, while such programs have achieved success, both actual and perceived, evaluation of such programs is difficult. For example, these programs are usually of short duration making the assessment of student learning under these circumstances problematic. The Center for Pre-college Programs at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) has offered the Women in Engineering and Technology program (FEMME) since 1981. Started as a program for 25 ninth graders, the program now serves 125 post-4 through post-8 grade students each summer. In that period of time since the initial program, an assortment of program evaluation instruments have been developed and implemented. This paper will discuss these instruments, some successes and some failures, and some of the results that have been obtained.