Week 14

Last blog of the semester!! I feel like this semester has flown by! It’s a good thing though because in 12 more days it will be summer!

During class last week we engaged ourselves in various ice breakers. Depending on the type of ice breaker, you can learn a lot about a person and have fun doing it. Conducting the right type of team building and ice breaker exercise can really allow bonding all groups of people.

I attended my last diversity event this past Friday. It was focused around women in Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields. The objective of the focal groups was to figure out why women were more likely to transfer outside of a STEM field then men, also why women may perhaps struggle more in these types of fields. I found it very interesting the different views people had within the group. People in the group ranged anywhere from professors, to advisors, to HR professionals, to admissions counselors, students and so forth.

We were allowed to separate ourselves into groups and come up with lists as to why women are not successful in completing a STEM field. Some of the items that made up my groups list were that women feel inferior. They will put themselves down when they don’t feel worthy enough and put themselves down. We also pointed out that professors often times have a lack of recognition that everyone has different learning styles, especially between the ways men and women learn.

A few other things we came up with revolved around how women are in their personalities compared to men that would explain why there are such difficulty keeping women involved in STEM fields. Women are often characterized as more nurturers and ‘soft’ while the STEM fields are often times not a ‘soft’ field. Another big thing was more of a question that most likely keeps women from these related fields which is how can being in these areas of study allow for women to be mothers. A goal in life for a lot of women is to have a family. Without a career that can go along with that, women are less likely to engage in those types of fields.

This event really opened up my mind to the various issues between women and STEM fields or just discriminated fields based on gender in general. I not only opened my mind up to these types of issues, but about my own life as well and what types of goals I have as well within my aspired career path.