Meet Mr. Respass:

Why do you feel it is important for girls to learn about STEM?

Most importantly, increasing female participation in STEM is about empowerment.  Many of the best careers in our new economy are tech jobs.  If women are not in these fields, they miss opportunities for high earning, fulfilling, influential careers.  The carry-over effects of this lost opportunity for empowerment cannot be overstated.

Second, we need more women in STEM because they are good at STEM.  No team leaves half of its best players on the bench and expects to win.  However, as a country, that is what we are doing.  We are missing the opportunity to recruit half of our best coders and engineers as a result of the social and institutional structures that we have in place.

What do you feel are common things that prevent girls from pursuing STEM?

Individuals begin considering and dismissing career options in middle school and high school.  Early positive opportunities and role models can make all the difference in the career options a student pursues.  If a young girl sees other girls succeeding in STEM fields, she is more likely to think, “Yeah, I could do that.”  However, if the girl instead only sees boys, she can easily wonder whether STEM is the best option for her.  Many of us are working to change the ‘norm’ so that everyone, girls, boys, and students of all backgrounds see others like themselves in STEM, recognizing that they too can succeed in this wonderful field.

What can we do to combat these things?

We need to focus on the feeders into STEM programs and classes.  The best high school soccer teams are supported by strong elementary and middle school soccer programs.  We need to think about developing STEM programs in the same way.  Most girls are not going to simply join classes like “AP Computer Science” in high school without earlier, positive experiences.  Girls must have many opportunities in middle school and earlier to experience STEM in an engaging and appropriate manner, setting the stages for their choices in high school and beyond.

What advice do you have for girls interested in learning about STEM?

Find girls like you and collaborate with them.  Don’t compete against each other, compete with each other!  STEM is a unique field where we are not looking for the one best engineer or computer scientist.  We need many, many really good engineers and coders who work well on teams.

Are there any STEM resources or programs you would like to share?

BCA is committed to achieving gender parity in its computer science courses.  As part of this effort, we offer a 1-week summer camp for middle school girls in which our high school girls teach middle school girls engineering and computer science.  We have hosted two very successful camps and are looking forward to another great one in 2020.  You can learn more at http://www.bergen.org/techcamp.