OPINION: Can female mentors patch the leaky STEM pipeline?
As a freshman, Stephanie Mula found the University of Massachusetts’s engineering program “overwhelming.” A first-generation college student, she wasn’t sure what to expect, how to get the most out of her classes or where to look for internships. Nevertheless, she went on to beat the odds of the famously leaky science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) pipeline that produces only three professionals for every 100 female students who begin studies in the field. Today, Mula is an industrial engineer at Raytheon Missile Systems.
She credits her success in part to the academic and professional advice of her upperclassmen mentor, a participant in a UMASS Amherst pilot program that’s revealing significant benefits for same-gender peer mentoring.
Mula says that even in her mostly male classes she never felt like an outsider, but suggests that female-female mentor pairings bond faster.
An astonishing 100 percent of female engineering students in the study mentored by advanced female students continued to their second year, a transition point that often sees many choose a different path. Researchers concluded successful female role models made the difference, stemming the decline in self-confidence seen among those with male mentors or no mentor at all. The results, published April in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest identity may play a role in effective mentoring, which could inform programs targeting other underrepresented groups.