A GROUP MENTORING PROGRAM TO SPARK STEM INTEREST ON YOUTH

Mentoring is a relationship between a less experienced person (called mentee) and a more experienced person (called mentor) with the objective of benefitting one or more areas of the mentee’s development. Mentoring is essentially about helping a person to develop more effectively, based on a given support that allows the mentee to take control of his or her own growth and progress. Mentors can encourage mentees to learn new skills and knowledge, and also to increase their achievement rates, self-esteem and confidence level. Mentors can facilitate the understanding of social-behavior and even promote the exploration of new and conflicting ideas.

Mentoring programs are being used with youth for different purposes, including areas such as daily life, education, and career. Regarding daily life, there are programs that succeed in encouraging the practice of sports, and in promoting positive social attitudes and relationships. Regarding education, some programs resulted in young people having better attitudes towards schooling, including better school attendances and better chances of going on to higher education. Focusing on careers, these programs can help young people to set career goals and take steps to achieve them; or can introduce young people to resources and organizations with which they may not be familiar.

Mentoring programs can be useful to spark the interest of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) in youth, by promoting the knowledge of STEM concepts and by motivating the direction of STEM careers. STEM education is critical due to its capacity to create critical thinkers, and to enable the next generation of innovators to deal with the changing demands for humans in an interconnected world.

In this paper, we present a group mentoring program focused on STEM education which was applied to girls aged between 12 and 16. The program was developed in a renowned Engineering school, due to a university-industry cooperation. The focus on girls is based on the existing gap in female participation in the STEM workforce. Group mentoring was chosen, since it provides a higher quantity of individuals who can benefit from mentoring as opposed to a one-on-one mentoring program. Moreover, group mentoring can promote richer debates and sessions due to the variety of context and expertise that each participant brings and shares with the group.

A program with 10 activities was then designed. One activity was applied in each weekly session. These activities put the girls in contact with inspiring scientists and engineers, and also present a variety of careers and education pathways. In the paper, we explain each activity in detail and present results with the evaluation of the 60 girls who participated in the program. Our initial results indicate the effectiveness of our proposal and encourage other practitioners to design their own programs based on the activities here described.