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Women’s Science Mentoring Group Lends Support to Frosh While researching material for her second year Sociology essay to earn bonus marks, Andrea Wallette came across a statistic that made her sit up and take notice. “There was a U.S. study in 2000 that tracked 2000 girls from grade nine who expressed an interest in science all the way to graduation. Out of those 2000 girls, only 20 of them graduated with a degree in science.” She then thought, “so where did all the other girls go?” As she continued her research, Wallette found out about a mentoring program at Dartmouth College called WISP (Women In Science Program) meant to stem the attrition of women from pursuing science. Wallette recalled thinking, “This is a great idea, I want to start this.” There was also a real life
experience to consider, “I was in chemistry and there were at From these influences, the Women In Science and Department Of Mathematics (WISDOM) program was born. Wallette approached Prof. Duncan Hunter (Associate Dean of Science-Research) who was her second year chemistry professor and, since she was a Residence Assistant at the time, Bob Gough Assistant Director of Residences. “Between him, Dr. Hunter, myself, and about five other close girlfriends of mine who are all in different departments … we started the program.” The program was launched at the beginning of the school year of 2001 after a summer of, “a lot of planning and a lot of emails.” The mentoring program provides “little sisters” first-year female students with “big sisters,” upper year female student volunteers from the same department. There is also a female faculty advisor from each department who plays an active role with the departmental facilitator. As Wallette says, “Our goal is to create a "network of support" whereby incoming students can get involved, get volunteer experience but also find role models, where sometimes there are no role models to be found.” It should be pointed out that the program is a support group and not a tutorial service. Throughout the year there will be other events that will feature speakers who will focus on topics or branches of study. The network still needs facilitators from the departments of Computer Science, Earth Sciences and the School of Kinesiology and upper year volunteers from varied scientific backgrounds. Applications are available online from the WISDOM website at www.uwo.ca/hfs/wisdom/ or you can contact them via email at wisdom_western@hotmail.com. |
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least four times as many girls as there were boys, which was OK because
I’ve always been a tomboy, but my friend Sandra and I asked ourselves ‘Where
are all the girls?’” She adds, “Then I actually had three friends who dropped
from science into ‘easier’ subjects in social science and I said, ‘No, they
are not easier, they’re just different.’”