Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pasteur!agate!mhnadel@gryphon.cts.com From: mhnadel@gryphon.cts.com (Miriam Nadel) Newsgroups: comp.society.women Subject: Re: responses to career days etc. Message-ID: <12001@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> Date: 10 Jul 88 17:53:53 GMT References: <11786@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: Trailing Edge Technology, Redondo Beach, CA Lines: 42 Approved: skyler@violet.berkeley.edu (Moderator -- Trish Roberts) Comments-to: comp-women-request@cs.purdue.edu Submissions-to: comp-women@cs.purdue.edu I missed the original article (having been off on a business trip) but I gather Marla wanted advice on high school visiting programs. I've been involved for the past two years in a program sponsored by AMITA (Association of MIT Alumnae), SWE (Society of Women Engineers) and AWIS (American Women in Science); we're being joined by the Caltech Alumni Association in planning for fall visits and Harvey Mudd College has also expressed interest. Our focus has been on visiting inner city schools throughout the Los Angeles area. The usual visit is to a 10th grade math or science class; this is the last year the students are required to take math or science so we're catching them at a critical time. In addition, we've found that younger students aren't thinking yet of the future so tend to pay less attention. Some schools will set up assemblies for girls only which we prefer as the girls tend to ask more questions if there aren't any boys there. Some schools prefer having us talk to their career guidance class (a peculiar California phenomenon) which is less desirable in general. We try to have teams of 3 women visit 2 or 3 classes at a school (essentially 2 hours) and aim to have a balance of professions (still within science/ engineering for the most part) and a balance between married and unmarried women with and without children so we can discuss how people balance career and family. A typical visit involves each member of the team talking for about 10 minutes about her career and how she got where she is. Then we open up the floor to questions and faint from the shock if there are any :-) Usually more questions come from the teachers than from the students. We also try asking the students questions about what they want to do. Talking about money is a good motivator for them too :-). How successful are we? One of my friends from the program saw a news telecast a few months after she had visited a school. The news team was talking to students and asked them what they wanted to do when they "grew up" (a phrase I suspect most high school age kids hate). One girl said she wanted to be a civil engineer and when the newscaster said, "Gee that's an unusual goal for a girl; how did you decide that?" replied that a woman from MIT had visited her school and talked about it. BTW, if anyone in the greater LA area is interested in volunteering, we'll be visiting some schools in the fall and you can send me e-mail for more info on getting involved. Miriam Nadel -- "This letter is meant to impress, not to put him at his ease. We must have long words." -E.C.Bentley mhnadel@gryphon.CTS.COM!gryphon!mhnadel