We have been asked to be a part of a digital story telling project at this year’s Women of Color STEM Entrepreneurship Conference at Arizona State University on May 20-May 22. The Women of Color STEM Entrepreneurship Conference “is a collaborative effort to advocate for increased participation of women of color in entrepreneurship experiences and small business enterprise; to advance entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial student engagement; and to transform the ways that entrepreneurship is viewed, taught and experienced in higher education.”

This year’s theme is The New Normal: Women of Color Innovations and Achievements through STEM Entrepreneurship, with guest speakers Dr. Aprille Ericsson-Jackson a NASA Aerospace Engineer, Sandra Begay-Campbell from Indian Energy Program Lead and Sandia National Laboratories, Angeles Valenciano the CEO of the National Diversity Council, Sharon M. Wong who is the Acting Director of Office of Personnel Management’s Office of Diversity & Inclusion, and Jaime Casap the Chief Education Evangelist at Google. The conference will be made up of speakers, workshops, and networking opportunities and is open to anyone with a passion in advocating for opportunities for women and girls of color in STEM and entrepreneurship opportunities.

We will be conducting video interviews capturing the story of resilience and persistence of these successful women of color through the STEM pipeline. These will eventually be accessible on our website to provide inspiration and role models for those at various stages in STEM.
 
For more information on the conference, go to: https://cgest.asu.edu

This past Tuesday, members of our Outreach and Resource coordination group held a "Post-Stem Dinner" on campus. In a closed, intimate setting, we spoke to fellow Amherst students about their experiences studying STEM at the College--and, more importantly still, about their decision to ultimately choose other fields of study instead. We are particularly aware that we have a lot to learn about improving the STEM experience from students who are no longer engaged with STEM at Amherst.

The resulting conversation was incredibly illuminating, and we can't wait to share our insights with you soon. In the meantime, we've posted some of the photographs of some post-STEM students who shared their stories with us.

On April 1st, 2016, we presented our work in a panel at Amherst Explorations: A Celebration of Student Research and Creative Work.

You can see a video of us talking about the HSTEM course here.