stemming.org : growing the community of girls and women in science, technology, engineering, and math

February 1, 2010 2:17 PM

stemming.org : growing the community of girls and women in science, technology, engineering, and math
Stemming.org is a networking website and community blog for women and girls interested in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math) to connect up and share resources.

Any user can blog on the site, and we'll feature any blog post that looks like it would be of interest to the community -- whether it's a link post, a story, a thoughtful analysis, or something else. We welcome users who are interested in STEM at any level -- from curious high schoolers to professionals well into a career to hobbyists. The site also has networking features -- where you can connect up with potential mentors, mentees, or business connections -- and social features that enable you to make new friends with similar interests.

posted by anotherthink (8 comments total)

Very cool! I hope this takes off big-time.
posted by tmcw at 6:43 PM on February 2, 2010

I'd like to see more things for Elementary aged girls. This is great, but my daughter is 9 and most of this is way over her head.
posted by TooFewShoes at 12:40 AM on February 3, 2010

TooFewShoes -- the content is all user-created, so if you want to write something targeted at that age group or know someone who does, we'd definitely welcome it! We're a relatively new site right now without a huge member base, and those of us who are writing on the site are writing from our own experiences/areas of expertise; but we're certainly hoping that as the site grows we can get a broader range of perspectives up there.
posted by anotherthink at 12:05 PM on February 3, 2010

That said, our blog/community format is probably more suited to high school plus users -- something like http://braincake.org is targeted more at younger kids. I try to include sites like that in link posts on stemming when I find them!
posted by anotherthink at 12:20 PM on February 3, 2010

Thank you--I'm going to pass this on to a female friend in chem. She's had a hard time dealing with the sexism in that field (or rather, in her lab), so this could be right up her alley.
posted by librarylis at 12:39 PM on February 6, 2010

Great idea, but that name!!! I'm a science writer and it doesn't work for me for some reason and I suspect I may not be alone. I know it's the acronym that is used, but I wonder if you could come up with a cooler name? After all, the idea is to attract people-- but it sounds like something you do with a crack pipe. Maybe I'm just weird though.
posted by Maias at 5:16 PM on February 8, 2010

I like it.
I like that I was led to a front page featuring something specific such as "mansplaining" (which happens!!). I too am planning on entering into a traditionally male-dominated industry and could use more specific observations such as this.
posted by lhude sing cuccu at 9:34 PM on February 8, 2010

I like the idea, but I'm not sure it's as useful as it could be in its current format as a multi-user blog. If I were a grad student, I'd have very different needs than if I were a kid who thinks science is cool. Perhaps there could be different sections. Young girls might like a section for themselves, with an area where they can chat and empower each other, an area where they could check out interesting projects and science-related topics posted for them at their language level, and an area to ask questions of volunteer mentors for advice on how to prepare for given professions. There could be a different section for grad students and young professionals with areas to network and share strategies.

I'm a new editor of my society's webpage for science education k-12. I just started, so I can't give you very good advice except that our web-page is terrible and probably isn't used very much. Perhaps you could be my mentor(!) on some ideas for improvement.

I agree with maias that "Stemming" is not a very catchy name.
posted by acrasis at 8:30 AM on February 21, 2010