Girls’ STEM Initiative Launches at Northeastern University – Seattle’s Campus on June 28
You are invited to help strengthen our region by inspiring girls to pursue STEM education.
In our first six months in Seattle, Northeastern University faculty and staff have been enmeshed in this region’s ongoing quest to create more STEM graduates to meet the mushrooming needs of our leading companies in technology, aerospace, health care and other sectors. In the fall of 2012, Northeastern University-Seattle Dean Tayloe Washburn worked with a coalition of STEM leaders, including Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon and Washington STEM, to adopt recommendations at the October 2012 Regional Leadership Conference (RLC). Northeastern President Joseph Aoun spoke in support of these at his keynote address at the RLC.
In April of this year, Northeastern hosted a forum on Games for Good as part of our Local Leaders, Global Impact Speaker Series, featuring three local game industry CEOs and Dr. Magy Saif El-Nasr, Northeastern University’s Director of Game Design and Director of Game Educational Programs and Research, from our College of Arts, Media and Design and College of Computer and Information Sciences. You can view that discussion here.
We focused on what it will take to scale great game ideas in education and healthcare, areas that the large commercial game companies are unlikely to invest in, given their focus on high-selling recreational games. We also talked about the very low number of girls who in early years (grades 4-7) want to go into STEM-related careers. If we as a nation can increase the number of girls choosing to pursue STEM careers, that will dramatically help our nation’s challenge in finding STEM talent and decrease the present need to import STEM talent from other nations.
What we learned is that an effective way to engage the girls in those ages is through the medium of video games. The research tells us that all kids under 18 spend an average of 2.2 hours every day after school playing video games.
Given this, a large number of women technology and business leaders, along with educators, STEM advocates and game industry professionals are coming together on Friday, June 28 at noon-2pm at our Seattle Campus to launch an initiative and strategy to tackle this challenge and real opportunity. Event details can be found here.
Northeastern is working in partnership with The National Girls Collaborative Project and the Center for Inquiry Science to this launch venture. Together, we are committed to working together to develop, over the next 12-18 months, 2-3 compelling video games that all will enjoy playing, but will be designed with the specific goal of getting more girls to opt for STEM careers. This is an ambitious venture and will require sustained energy and the very best minds in this region and nation to succeed.
As this will be a community-wide effort, many types of help are required. Please come learn about this exciting regional project and consider joining our new team. We hope to see you on the 28th.