Increasing women graduate students in STEM fields through a focused recruitment workshop

Abstract

The participation of U.S. women in graduate STEM programs has historically been low. This is due partially to the lack of awareness of what graduate school entails and the fear of failure/success. Kansas State University received an ADVANCE NSF grant, of which one aspect is to encourage more women to pursue higher degrees. As part of this effort, the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering organized a one-day workshop titled Finding the Ideal Graduate Program for women students in STEM fields. Early in our process, we determined that establishing contacts and making visits to select feeder schools would be more effective then mass e-mails and mailings. It was a challenge to find female undergraduate students from smaller Midwestern schools who had considered graduate school. This is where presenting a short seminar on graduate research and careers at these schools made a large impact. The workshop was successfully conducted using presentations from five faculty members and a panel of current graduate students. All of the participants found that the presentations were very useful. Feedback and recommendations for future work are presented.