Importance of STEM to economic growth

On the 10th September I was lucky enough to go on a training course titled: ‘Importance of STEM to economic growth’. It was an interesting day with very engaging speakers. It made me more motivated to focus on the bigger picture and how the public engagement and outreach we do is contributing to solving a social economic problem. These are some bullet points I made of the day – they are in note form. Averil McDonald gave a good talk:

• Setting up a STEM club could help motivate young people. Averil McDonald said the opposite as girls have too much to do.
• Inform STEM ambassador programme that ECSOutreach exists.
• Might be a good idea to set up parents classes e.g. internet safety etc. To build them up.
•  We need to make sure we say comforting things to parents like: your child will be happy, not lonely, supported, we want people ewho excel at lanagugaes, personable etc.
• Make it relevant for girls –> bigger picture.
• Don’t do competitions
• Role models have to be like them (so people who have just started in year 1)
• Egos put them off
• Posters like ‘Think like an engineer’ do not work because they don’t want to change who they are.
• Its good to tell girls they are discriminated against in Industry and say how the uni will help them.
• Computer Science is essentially linguistics  – might be an idea to use similar words to marketing it to what psychology do to market their course.
• At transition points – postdoc etc – its important these women have increased visibility in the department, people know what they are doing and they are given the chance to shine.