Wanda Gass is officially retired from TI, but you wouldn’t know it by how she spends her time. As the executive director of the High Tech High Heels Fund and volunteer for the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity (NAPE), she constantly roams the halls of TI for a very good cause.
“It’s about helping high school girls be prepared to go into science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) when they get to college,” said Wanda. “We’re trying to help the girls that might fall behind in those subjects in high school and be ready to actually major in those fields when they get to college.”
The issue: The number of girls going into engineering majors compared to boys is significantly lower – less than 20 percent of graduates with a bachelor’s degree in engineering and less than 25 percent of engineering PhDs are women, according to the National Science Foundation. Wanda said from a business point of view, TI or any engineering company would be better off with more women engineers.
“We actually do better problem solving and innovation with a diverse workforce,” said Wanda.
For Wanda, her time and effort focuses on giving bright girls with lots of potential a chance to succeed through three different initiatives. The first program is a two-week camp for girls.
“Many of the girls in our High Tech High Heels Physics Camps specifically come from situations where they may be the first person in their family to go to college. If they choose a STEM career, their earning ability is a lot higher and they have job security that will be there the rest of their lives,” she said.
Recently, NAPE looked into how the girls who enrolled in the 2006 camp were doing today and the numbers were telling. The girls that attended the camp were more likely to enroll in college, with 93 percent going on to become college students versus 77 percent of girls who didn’t go to the camp. Sixty-four percent of the camp girls were also more likely to earn a four year degree compared to just 25 percent of the non-camp girls.
The High Tech High Heels Fund also supports NAPE, which offers professional development for teachers. NAPE conducts teacher training for mainly science and math classes, helping the teachers develop new techniques to get girls more involved in classes. It levels the playing field in those classrooms, and NAPE research shows both boys and girls do better after the training.
Finally, the High Tech High Heels Fund champions NAPE’s efforts to work with guidance counselors.
“We talk to them about STEM careers and why we are passionate about having more women get into those fields. So they are armed with the right attitude and statistics to encourage girls to go pursue the more technical careers,” she said.
Wanda’s working days at TI may be over, but her work is far from complete.
“There’s a huge demand for engineers and we just don’t have enough people in the United States with the necessary education. If we can get as many girls going into engineering careers as boys, then we would close the gap on the engineering deficit that we have in our country,” she said.