Page 20 - College Planning & Management, October 2018
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Everything I Learned About Learning in Kindergarten
BUILDING A COMMUNITY. At the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), the Center for Women in Technology (CWIT) helps UMBC to identify those areas in science, technology, and engineering where women are underrepresented, attracts well-qualified female students such as Julianna Posey to UMBC through special scholarship initiatives such as the CWIT Scholars Program, and works with departments and other campus partners to help make UMBC a welcoming place for women in engineering and information technology.
and Posey enrolled as a mechanical engi- neering student. Still, she worried about how she’d be perceived, and if she was going to be able to succeed in such a rigorous program. She attended an ori- entation for the program and her fears disappeared.
“I felt right at home,” she says.
The program is designed to lessen the isolation that many women feel in a space where there are often only a handful of women in a classroom or at a job site.
“There is community that is there for you, a group where you can go and talk to other women who are experiencing the same thing you are,” Posey says.
Students in the Scholars Program graduate a higher rate than their peers at UMBC with identical socioeconomic status and high school qualifications, according to a study conducted by the university.
Erica D’Eramo, the assistant director for the Center for Women in Technolo- gy, says that college administrators and faculty must first acknowledge past failures in supporting women in STEM
before any progress can be made. Then they must take the lead.
“We cannot do this work alone—we need our allies, we need voices around the table who get it and are able to sup- port women and advocate for women’s rights in a different way than women are currently able to do on their own,” D’Eramo says.
The best assets in recruitment have proven to be the women scholars themselves.
“We send our students out to these schools to share their passion, to show young women there that they can do this too,” she says.
Building Something That Lasts
Shannon Sturtz had decided to study applied mathematics at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, but a summer on a Massachusetts work site with her father and talks with her mother made her realize a future in the family trade of construction was more in line with her interests and goals.
“I didn’t want to work behind a desk all day,” she says. “I love how personable
20 WEBCPM.COM / OCTOBER 2018
PHOTO © MARLAYNA DEMOND FOR UMBC


































































































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