What's New

A new report from the National Student Clearinghouse looks at degrees in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math) and finds that the share of STEM bachelor’s degrees going to women ticked down over the past decade. The biggest decline was in computer science, where women received 23 percent of bachelor’s degrees awarded in 2004 and just 18 percent in 2014.

Engineering is Elementary (EiE)’s newest after school learning unit called “Sky’s the Limit.” This hands-on unit, targeted for grades 3-5, focuses on the field of aeronautical engineering and includes 8 lessons that are 45-minutes each. The free program also includes an educator guide, engineering journal, and online resources that support both the educators as well as the students. Download the unit for free to provide students with an interactive lesson on engineering.

Future City asks middle-school students to imagine, design, and build cities of the future. After four months of designing a virtual city (using SimCity), researching, designing, and writing up their solution to a city-wide issue and building a scale model of their city, teams will present their vision to a panel of judges. After the competition is over, student participants are not only prepared to be citizens of today’s complex and technical world, they are poised to become the drivers of tomorrow.

It is a constant struggle to bring more women into the Stem (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects and to keep them there, and not just at secondary level. And even when women do engage with these subjects there is a higher attrition rate for women leaving careers coming via Stem than for men.