Above: Middle school girls are again being encouraged to explore a world of STEM based careers from Architect to Veterinarian. (Images posted to flickr L-R by Will Scullin, US Dept. of Agr., zhouxuan12345678, and NAIT)
If you want to encourage your 5th – 8th grade daughter(s) to explore a future in science, technology, engineering or math, take note.
The Northboro Junior Woman’s Club opened registration for its annual STEM conference for girls. The event is free and welcomes Southborough students – so I really encourage girls to make the most of this opportunity.
The event is more than three weeks away. But, don’t delay signup too long. The popular conference is limited to 180 girls, always fills to capacity, and girls may have preferences for which workshop they hope to attend. The good news is that sign up is easier this year, thanks to online registration.
This year, the conference is on Saturday, March 24 from 8:30 am – 1:30 pm.
It will again be made up of an opening presentation, interactive workshops and informal discussions over a luncheon. To encourage interest and success in the science fields:
The presenters will explain what they do in their occupation and what sparked their interest in the field, share different tips on courses of study needed for their profession, and provide hands-on exploration/activities.
The hands-on career workshops planned for this year are:
- Architecture
- Chiropractor – The Biochemistry of Super Nutrition
- Computer & Electrical Engineer – Virtual Reality
- Conservation Agent – Going Green
- Environmental Health & Safety Engineering – Hazardous for your Health?
- Forensic Chemistry – CSI
- Nursing
- Occupational Therapy
- Ophthalmologist – Do you see what I see?
- Pharmacist – Pharmacy Olympics
- Research Scientist – Drug Design
- Science Teacher
- STEM Educators – Bristlebot Robot
- Veterinarian – Vet for a Day
To see more workshop and event details click here to open the flyer. To register, click here.
This is the 11th time the Junior Women’s Club has held the mentoring event (previously titled Women in Science & Math Conference.)
Thank you Northborough Junior Women’s club for organizing such a worthwhile event. And for free!
Isn’t this a form of noninclusion and a form of racism? kind of like take your daughter to work day that we got changed 20 years ago to take your child to work day? Why is this allowed? Food for thought folks. Any form of exclusion, is discriminatory. Shame on you Southborough.
It’s Northborough. There are a lot of programs that encourage STEM for everyone. But there is a widespread belief that some are trying to address that girls are in some way discouraged or not encouraged to pursue STEM jobs. This is a group of women in the profession encouraging girls to realize that they can do it, too.
Frankly, it ticks me off that whenever someone tries to do something good for a group of people that have a disadvantage, someone cries but what about the inherent advantage? Why can’t they have another advantage? Discrimination!
By the way, your frequent rants against anyone who is trying to do something positive completely negate your recent comment, “I hate to be negative.” Seems to me you love to be.
It’s run by a Women’s Club, it makes sense that they would be encouraging girls.
Don’t worry, white heterosexual males are still holding the majority of leadership roles in this country.
RACISM? And YES Beth a big LIKE for your last paragraph. I chuckled to myself and thought the same thing!
Can we move to a higher level of post moderation, Beth? There is clearly a handful of supreme idiots and trolls in this town that needlessly lessen the value of this site for everyone with their comments. This comment is essentially trolling in its level of idiocy and failure of reading comprehension. While the poster tried to make a point that is protected free speech and all that jazz, it failed in basic comprehension of the post in that this is hosted by a women’s club (not that it should even be considered controversial if it wasn’t). That alone would warrant this to be rejected for posting in many other places. Can we raise our standards here?
A program like this exists because women were excluded for YEARS. It’s called balance. Jeesh.
I think Mike brings up an interesting point: why do girls need to be encouraged to look at careers in STEM? Why does the Junior Women’s Club see the need to hold a “mentoring event” like this?
Mike may not have heard of the August firing of Google engineer James Damore, who suggested that the under-representation of women in software engineering was due to a lack of interest. Is that true, or is it just another stereotype which needs to be confronted, I wonder. Certainly, STEM careers are well-paid ones, and women are just as capable as their male counterparts, so events like this one may help to pique the interest of girls who might not have considered a STEM career previously.
Let’s take another scenario – the field of Early Childhood Ed is woefully lacking in male representation. Perhaps a male-only mentoring event would help to open up the field and encourage men to apply for positions as preschool teachers. I’d hazard a guess that pay might improve if more men occupied these roles, so it would be a win-win situation!
Very good point Kate, and I thought this was an open forum so I try to say something decent to start. I Truly don’t try or want to be negative but when I see discrimination, which is so rampant I believe towards young boys, I’m going to speak up H
(Best to leave the CEO thing out of it, that’s a exceptio to the example and I believe if a woman wants to be a CEO she can go after it and succeed). But it seems to me there’s a crisis for young boys and men in the country. Just look at the stats: more women graduate college, more woman graduate with MBA’s — this is great, I have 2 girls, this is wonderful. But we have men and young boys on ADD drugs because they are labeled so-called hyperactive ( I believe in some cases medication is truly needed). We have Hollywood shooting up the world with guns, boys are playing the violent video games, and they’re not releasing the normal energy they have appropriately . For you who always feel compelled chime in with your liberal bias and aggression when I speak up including you Beth, what’s your recommendation in this messed up world for boys. It doesn’t matter if there’s guns are not there’s hammers and knives. And let me say we used to carry rifles on the Bus to high school ( i’m 59 for the record, that’s not long ago) for rifle club. I don’t see any of the boys outside playing anymore. We try to put a round peg in a square hole at public schools and it just doesn’t work. And I think it would be absolutely wonderful to start to guide young boys into the teaching trades again. It’s become a women dominated environment. It would be a great place for young boys to see men as role models. Perhaps even male only charter schools for just young man if we are really looking for solutions and not just banning firearms ? Teaching them and role modeling for them on being truly good young man?
Reading this filth makes me want to take a shower. It saddens me to no end that there are people who still think this way and are trapped in their 1950s, whitebread, patriarchal views. Thank god they are dwindling and dying off like the dinosaurs they are. Unfortunately they feel safe to spew their hate with a racist, misogynistic bully in the Oval Office. This too shall pass, and hopefully in 2020 these folks will slither back to the rocks under which they have been hiding.
I guess the “Northboro Junior Woman’s Club” should be encouraging MEN in STEM to make Mike happy? Also, I never knew women were a race!
Funny how folks who start a sentence with “I hate to be negative…” are often negative and hateful. I suppose some people just are happier when they’re angry at something. Oh well.
Anyway, good for you Northboro Junior Woman’s Club!
This woman is phenomenal. A reasoned person versus militants on the left. Are We Free to Discuss America’s Real Problems? https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/are-we-free-to-discuss-americas-real-problems/
I took a reasoned approach and got attacked. You all should contemplate your lack of mature discussion. This woman is brilliant, the audience may learn from her.
If you don’t want to be “attacked”, then stop including judgemental phrases like “Shame on you”.
You could have posted your concern without making it an attack. Then, you could have claimed the high ground. Instead, you posted an, unprompted, attack against a non-profit group trying to do a good thing. You can’t then reasonably claim to be unfairly attacked for passionate rebuttals to your view point.
You have a history of lobbing hostile grenades through comments on the post, then crying foul when people respond with attacks.
Here’s a quote from Amy Wax:
“Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime.”
I’ll break down where she has a point and where she doesn’t.
Yes, marriage isn’t what it once was. The ideal is still a lifelong commitment, but that’s often not the reality. 1-0.
We Americans are more educated than ever. No, we don’t know Ovid and Pliny, but the normal high school curriculum is much more STEM sophisticated than it was in the alleged golden age of our grandparents. 1-1.
Americans work really, really, really hard. We work long hours. Both spouses work. Our employers now expect the extra, extra mile. The extra mile is assumed. 1-2.
We’ve made incredible, unfair demands on our warrior class in order not to have a draft. Personally, I believe every war should require a draft with no out for the elite. One problem – not the one Wax is talking about, I would guess – is that our current elites on the right are intent on narrowing what it means to serve one’s country to allow them to loot it. I’ll be generous with Wax: 2-2.
I find us pretty neighborly, although there’s certainly a trend to drive to associations, rather than to find them next door. Not sure how to score this.
Avoid coarse language in public. No, we don’t do that anymore. I don’t give a … 3-2. (Is this really what matters?!)
Respect and authority have to be mutual. LBJ lied about Vietnam. GWB lied about Iraq. DJT lies about … everything. Yeah, I’m not going to respect that. Still, it’s a real problem. Wax is just seeing it from the wrong side. 3-3.
Opioids are a massive problem, bigger than guns in terms of death. There’s more than will involved, given the tremendous abuses of pharma sales. A wash.
Crime is way down, back to early 1960s levels. Anyone who tells you differently is lying to you. 3-4.
Here is another quote from Amy Wax.
“Too few Americans are qualified for the jobs available. Male working-age labor-force participation is at Depression-era lows. Opioid abuse is widespread. Homicidal violence plagues inner cities. Almost half of all children are born out of wedlock, and even more are raised by single mothers. Many college students lack basic skills, and high school students rank below those from two dozen other countries.”
My bet is that many people agree with most of these quotes. I can imagine the last five presidents including the current president saying these things and getting loud applause (OK maybe not all audiences). The problem is that these opinions are going to get Amy Wax tossed from Penn Law school. You may think these are values from the 1950’s, but to me there are many bed rock values in what she says. Any professor who gets fired for holding such opinions speaks loudly to what is going wrong in America.
Sensorship of opinion is a very slippery slope.
“As a scholar she is free to advocate her views, no matter how dramatically those views diverge from our institutional ethos and our considered practices,” Ruger wrote. “As a teacher, however, she is not free to transgress the policy that student grades are confidential, or to use her access to those Penn Law students who are required to be in her class to further her scholarly ends without students’ permission.”
From http://www.thedp.com/article/2018/03/amy-wax-petition-penn-law-students-black-african-american-upenn-philadelphia
You left a better quote out:
“We know Wax is liable to behave in racist ways and say racist things and the University didn’t do anything about it before,” Pilgrim said.
To call someone a “racist” is the new McCarthyism. Instead of engaging in debate of the ideas/thoughts presented, just call the person a racist and argument or career is over. Fixed in the 50’s, works too often today. I am sure Wax is toast at Penn.
Of course, Professor Wax isn’t a racist. She just makes racist statements – on the record:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/03/15/penn-law-professor-who-said-black-students-rarely-perform-well-loses-teaching-duties/?utm_term=.53569edab673
Thanks for posting the article. I assume you are referring to Wax’s comment about “rarely” seeing a black student graduating in the top of half of the class (paraphrasing) and the dean calling the remarks “inaccurate.” Interesting that the dean did not show the data.
If the data shows she was wrong than she made a racist statement – no doubt.
If she is right, why not look into the reasons, come up with solutions rather than move to oust her???
Much easier to call her racist and get her out of there.
The Youtube video in its full hour is interesting. No, I did not sit through the whole video. You can pick the subject matter discussed.