“Hopefully the scholarship opportunity will motivate some young women to consider a major they might not have otherwise considered,” Debure says. “The summer research opportunity will help prepare them to succeed in either graduate school or in the workplace.”
Debure adds that the cohort of summer researchers will also create a community that will act as a network and support system for young women entering these currently male-dominated fields.
“The life sciences have, by and large, successfully increased the proportion of women in STEM to 50% (or more) of the bachelor’s degrees in the field. The physical and mathematical sciences continue to lag behind,” Cox explains. “There are cultural issues—just think about who the physicists are [as] portrayed in popular culture like in The Big Bang Theory. There are resource issues that are often tied to the cultural issues,…
