Overview
The NGCP is designed to reach girl-serving STEM organizations across the United States and Puerto Rico. An intense recruitment and selection process began Fall 2005 to identify sponsoring organizations to lead the local collaboratives. The organizations selected to host local collaboratives are impressive in their knowledge, experience, and diversity. As a group, the local collaboratives have an extensive network of organizations and individuals engaged in pursuing this common goal and the opportunity to share with and learn from each other. They vary in focus areas and populations served, but all work to increase gender equity in STEM fields.
The vision of the NGCP is to bring together organizations throughout the United States and Puerto Rico that are committed to informing and encouraging girls to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
The goals of NGCP are to:
- Maximize access to shared resources within projects and with public and private sector organizations and institutions interested in expanding girls’ participation in STEM.
- Strengthen capacity of existing and evolving projects by sharing promising practice research and program models, outcomes and products.
- Use the leverage of a network or collaboration of individual girl-serving STEM programs to create the tipping point for gender equity in STEM.
It is commonly recognized that the representation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields is too low both from a perspective of equal opportunity (Gowan & Waller, 2002; Sadker & Sadker, 1994) and for meeting the projected need of STEM professionals (Chubin, May & Babco, 2005). Studies show that the low representation of women in STEM professions begins as early as eighth grade, when twice as many boys than girls show an interest in STEM careers (Commission on the Advancement of Women and Minorities in Science, Engineering, and Technology Development, 2000), and continues in college, where women received only 21% of bachelor’s degrees awarded in engineering, 27% in computer sciences, and 43% in physical sciences (National Science Board, 2006). Factors such as perceptions of careers, confidence, role models, and career advice have been noted in the literature as contributing to the lack of females in information technology (Bartol & Aspray, 2006). Women constitute 45% of the workforce in the United States but hold 25% of science and engineering jobs and 29% of computer and mathematical occupations (U.S. Census Bureau, 2000).(PDF requires Adobe Acrobat Reader or the Acrobat Plug-in)
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