Addressing the STEM Gender Gap by Designing and Implementing an Educational Outreach Chemistry Camp for Middle School Girls

There continues to be a persistent, widespread gender gap in multiple STEM disciplines at all educational and professional levels: from the self-reported interest of pre-school aged students in scientific exploration, to the percentages of tenured faculty in these 10 disciplines, more men than women express an interest in science, a confidence in their scientific abilities, and ultimately more men than women decide to pursue scientific careers. Reported herein is an intensive outreach effort focused on addressing this gender gap: a full-time, week-long chemistry camp that was designed and implemented for middle school girls in the state of Rhode Island. The camp schedule included 15 multiple hands-on experiments, field trips, and significant interactions with female scientists, all of which were designed to increase the participants’ interest in and enthusiasm for science. The success of the program in changing the participants’ attitudes towards science was measured through administration of a pre-camp and post-camp survey, and the survey results demonstrated a strong success in changing 20 the participants’ attitudes towards the widespread applicability of science, their perceived level of support for scientific study, and their interest in pursuing STEM-related careers.


INTRODUCTION
There is a significant dearth of female chemists at the highest levels of academia: at 30 the top 50 schools (measured by research funding), only 18% of tenured and tenuretrack positions were held by females in 2012-2013. 1 The numbers are slightly more encouraging across all STEM disciplines at all academic institutions, with approximately 25% of full-time, full professor positions held by females in 2015. 2 Research indicates that this gender gap may start as early as elementary school, with 35 female students having a more negative attitude towards science than males starting as early as 4 th grade. 3,4 This gender gap is likely reinforced by the fact that high school science teachers spend significantly more time addressing the boys in the classroom, a fact that has been well-documented in the literature as recently as 2013. 5,6 This gender gap has a multitude of potential causes that have been investigated in 40 the literature, including: (a) a lack of female scientist role models, 7,8 which contributes to childrens' perceptions that scientists are overwhelmingly white males; 9,10 (b) girls' self-perception that they lack aptitude and ability to succeed in STEM disciplines; 11 and (c) teachers', parents', and other authority figures' reinforcement of these stereotypical notions. 12,13 These phenomena affect children as young as 4 years old, 14 and continue of majors and careers. [15][16][17] Educators have attempted to address this gender gap through increasing girls' access to female role models, [18][19][20] and through conducting outreach activities specifically targeted towards female students. 21  Participants were responsible for arranging their own transportation to and from camp each day. In addition to the 11 major activities discussed below, students also participated in multiple swimming breaks throughout the week, watched selected 95 science videos, and engaged in extensive interactions with invited speakers, camp volunteers, and the PI, Dr. Levine.

Participant Demographics
The 36 participants came from communities throughout the state of Rhode Island, with the largest contingent from Pawtucket (9/36 of the girls). The participants came 100 from public schools (17), private schools (14), charter schools (1), and home schools (4).

HANDS-ON EXPERIMENTATION
As mentioned in the introduction, one goal of the camp was to educate the participants about the applicability of science in their everyday lives through hands-on 105 experimentation. This hands-on experimentation has been shown to be crucial to encouraging general interest in and enthusiasm about STEM disciplines. 39 To that end, the camp schedule included 11 hands-on activities (Table 1). For each activity, the participants learned about the key scientific background, conducted the experiments, and discussed the results. Selected photographs of these activities are shown in Figure   110 1.  formal educational settings a fairly rare phenomenon. 56 We directly addressed the agree; 5 = strongly disagree). Asterisks next to the question numbers indicate those questions that had the most significant differences in responses pre-and post-camp.

150
The results of this survey are summarized in Table 2. A paired t-test conducted on this data gave a two-tailed P value less than 0.0001 for the cumulative survey scores, considered to be extremely statistically significant. Several of these results merit further discussion: (1) For all questions, the average responses were higher at the start of the week than at the end of the week, meaning that more of the girls agreed with these  (2) The questions with the greatest pre-camp to post-camp differential were, "Science can help me figure out how to spin/shoot/throw/hit the ball" (Question 7), and "Using scientific methods helps me decide what to buy in the store" (Question 14), 175 with an 0.75 differential pre-camp to post-camp measured for both of these questions.
Interestingly, both of these questions directly address the applicability of science in daily life, and particularly in areas that are not traditionally considered to fall in the scientific realm. The dramatic change in the girls' responses in a one-week time period indicate the success of the program in teaching the participants that science is relevant 180 to a wide range of topics.
(3) One key goal of the camp was to encourage the girls' interest in STEM disciplines and STEM careers. The successful realization of that goal was evident in the response to scientist discussion) can be run as an independent event, and is also likely to increase the participants' excitement for and exposure to science.
One unanswered question is whether the positive effects observed in the survey responses will persist long-term, with girls who have participated in this program 205 maintaining their scientific enthusiasm over subsequent months and years. Future efforts will focus on conducting follow-up surveys of the program participants, to track their long-term interest in science, as well as their choice of college, college major, and future career. In future years, we will also administer more detailed surveys to elucidate the effects of each aspect of this program (experiments, field trips, and