Abstract:

Women have historically been significantly underrepresented in STEM studies and professions. PROWESS, the Partnership of Women Excelling as Scientists and Scholars, was established in response to the national shortage of female scholars, seeking degrees in STEM disciplines.

One PROWESS experiment involved a small group of first-year students who were enrolled in a pre-college-level math course; all self-identified themselves as being technophobic. These students were encouraged to enroll in an all-female computer hardware course. They only agreed to do so if they were allowed to register for the course on a Credit/No Credit basis, in lieu of being assigned traditional letter grades. The experiment was a success. All members of the cohort discovered a dormant affinity for technology and adopted STEM majors.

PROWESS has since evolved into a research and mentoring network. PROWESS research initiatives include: Underwater Crime Scene Investigation (CSI); Clandestine Communications in Virtual Environments; Underwater Communication Networks; Modeling of Adversarial Relations Using Game Theory; Simulation and Modeling of Satellite Network Protocols; Probabilistic Risk Analysis of Unmanned Autonomous Systems and the design of Underwater Remotely Operated Vehicles. Since its inception in 2001, PROWESS has evolved into a puberty-to-Ph.D. pipeline.

Keywords:

STEM gender initiative.