The most damaging phrase in the language is 'it's always been done that way'
Admiral Grace Hooper
Our mission
The mission of GWSTEM is to inspire young girls to pursue a career in STEM confidently. With the right tools, any girl can successfully approach their field of interest already prepared with an educational background. And through the approach to learning strategically, we can create a fun duality between academics and joy. We like to call this "joyous academics". Since, with its research-backed success, joyous academics acknowledges the importance of creating a safe and exciting environment for the retention of information in the long run. The more fun learning is, the more effective it is. This can hopefully lead to a heightening in the stakes of success of young girls in the fields of STEM!
Our goal
Short-term
We strive to prepare young girls for their future in STEM through science-backed learning methods. By helping our future
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Scientists, Engineers, Technicians, and Mathematicians get a head start in their career, we can get one step closer to
making STEM a career in which girls aren't minorities.
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Long-run
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We aim to raise awareness and work collectively to bridge the gender gap in STEM by preparing future generations from a
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young age. This gender divide is not recent, it is an effect of the past in the future. Giving young girls the support and
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preparation they need because of the disadvantages they've had can become a cornerstone for the reformation of gender
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dynamics in society.
Here's the science
Neuroimaging and neurochemical research support an education model in which stress and anxiety are not pervasive (Chugani, 1998; Pawlak, Magarinos, Melchor, McEwan, & Strickland, 2003). This research suggests that superior learning takes place when classroom experiences are enjoyable and relevant to students' lives, interests, and experiences.
Many education theorists (Dulay & Burt, 1977; Krashen, 1982) have proposed that students retain what they learn when the learning is associated with strong positive emotion. Cognitive psychology studies provide clinical evidence that stress, boredom, confusion, low motivation, and anxiety can individually, and more profoundly in combination, interfere with learning (Christianson, 1992).
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Neuroimaging and measurement of brain chemicals (neurotransmitters) show us what happens in the brain during stressful emotional states. By reading glucose or oxygen use and blood flow, positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) indicate activity in identifiable regions of the brain. These scans demonstrate that under stressful conditions information is blocked from entering the brain's areas of higher cognitive memory consolidation and storage. In other words, when stress activates the brain's affective filters, information flow to the higher cognitive networks is limited and the learning process grinds to a halt.
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Neuroimaging and electroencephalography (EEG) brain mapping of subjects in the process of learning new information reveal that the most active areas of the brain when new sensory information is received are the somatosensory cortex areas. Input from each individual sense (hearing, touch, taste, vision, smell) is delivered to these areas and then matched with previously stored related memories.
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For example, the brain appears to link new words about cars with previously stored data in the category of transportation. Simultaneously, the limbic system, comprising parts of the temporal lobe, hippocampus, amygdala, and prefrontal cortex (front part of the frontal lobe), adds emotional significance to the information (sour flavor is tasty in lemon sherbet but unpleasant in spoiled juice). Such relational memories appear to enhance storage of the new information in long-term memory (Andreasen et al., 1999).
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