Welcome to Engineering WINS (Engaging Women in Engineering: Training Mentors to Make a Difference). EngWINS is an exciting partnership between a natural history museum (The Academy of Natural Sciences) a University (Drexel University College of Engineering and School of Education) and a city educational not-for-profit (the Philadelphia Education Fund). The project seeks to transform a 40 year old STEM program into a power-house pathway to engineering and STEM for minoritized young women in Philadelphia. Please enjoy our video and we welcome questions and comments about our partnership, project and research.

I agree with Nancy, tying mentorship with hands-on projects that require persistence and design thinking is a real winning combination. I particularly loved that alumna of the program are now serving in leadership roles. One project you may want to add to your repertoire is a community garden since it will strengthen the cross-generation connections even more. I look forward to seeing your program and students grow!

Hello fellow STEM champions! Thank you for visiting and for voting for our Engineering WINS program. Since our inception, the WINS Team worked hard to provide young women the tools they need to pursue STEM, and we've created a community of like-minded young women that support and empower each other as well. We are so grateful for the love and support for our program, but I also want to send a special shout out to all of our WINS participants for choosing this program and its mentors to be a part of their future success!

Love the EngWINS work! As you pivot from Natural Sciences to Engineering, I encourage you to check out the work of my former employer Techbridge Girls (exec dir Nikole Collins-Puri, former dir and founder Linda Kekelis). We had a NSF grant for Role Model training in our engineering-focused girl-serving intervention; see the resources developed at https://www.techbridgegirls.org/rolemodelsmatter/

Hi Jacqueline and team-

Lovely video and very inspiring project. Before going into full time research, I also lead out of school time programs for young students of color, girls and students from under-resourced communities. I am curious about how you recruited the participants into this program. Did they apply? Were they nominated by teachers? What sort of criteria did you use? Also, do you follow the students after they complete the program? What does their trajectory look like?

Thank you!

Thank you for checking us out Nonye! To recruit our students there are various steps and select criteria we use. For the recruitment process, we first ask teachers, counselors, colleagues, and current WINS participants and Alumnae to nominate students. Only those who are nominated receive an application. From our completed applications, we interview 50 students for 25 spots. We specifically recruit for students who attend Philadelphia public and charter high schools, placing special emphasis (but not required) on those coming from households facing financial limitations.

We also like to note that our students are expected to maintain a B average throughout high school, but do not have to be the academic star to be selected for the program. They also do not have to like science, but at least be open to exploring new things out of their comfort zone.

We try our best to reach out to alumnae through various surveys to check in. We've had a few program evaluations over the years that included connecting with alumnae to learn about the broader impact of WINS after they moved on to college and their careers, and we are currently running a pilot project to learn more about the broader impacts of the program.

As of now, we know that approximately 65% of our graduates pursue a STEM major in college, and approximately 44% of our alumnae graduate and go on to STEM careers.

Does this help? Again thanks so much for checking us out! :)

Kimberly - I love this program. Your numbers for who graduates to go on and pursue STEM careers is impressive.  I was wondering about the mentor side of the program. You mentioned above:

We will enroll adult mentor candidates into a full year of training in culturally relevant pedagogies and ways to combat stereotype barriers and implicit biases prior to entering into mentoring

Can you elaborate some more on this? 

I love how "hands on" this program is. Great historical numbers for program graduates pursing a STEM major in college! Your research questions ask "to what extent do pairings of mentors and mentees from different backgrounds influence students' interest, self-efficacy, and persistence in engineering education and careers?" How are you measuring interest, self-efficacy, and persistence? Will there be a comparison group?

Thomas thank you for the question.  We will be measuring interest, self-efficacy and persistence using the Student Attitudes Toward STEM survey and the STEM Career Inventory survey along with narrative and discourse analysis of interviews, focus groups and journals. The comparison group we are using are students in the EngWINS program that do not participate in the internships.

Hi, all! It's great to see this opportunity for Philadelphia-area students. 

I am curious about the overall participant experience. How long does it last? Is it a primarily after-school or summer program? 

It also appears that students tackle a bunch of different challenges (both smaller scale classroom-type activities, as well as place-based work). I am curious to know what guides the selection of these challenges (student interest, "Grand Challenges," etc!)

Great questions - I will defer to Kim (the project manager)

Wow!  54% of your participants have careers in STEM, that's great!  Did these girls already have a predisposition towards positive attitudes in STEM? Or did you see a shift in attitudes after the completion of the project? 

Thanks to all for the detailed answers!

So proud to be a part of this amazing team! 

I really like hearing from the participants and how it impacted them. I also love that it makes connections that impact their lives. This is a great project and video!

@Shannon - thank you! I ran the WINS program from 1984 to 1994, and am beyond thrilled to be working with the program again. 

Thank you for your work on this project, and thank you for creating and sharing this video. Thank you for sharing how you are developing curricular materials and training mentors in culturally-responsive pedagogies and anti-discriminatory frameworks. I enjoyed hearing from current engWINS participants and alumni!