GSE/EXT: California WomenTech Extension Services Project (CalWomenTech)

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The California WomenTech Extension Services (CalWomenTech) is serving the California Community College (CACC) system, to increase the participation of women in technology education programs. Services are provided by the Institute for Women in Trades, Technology and Science (IWITTS) in Alameda, California, in collaboration with the City College of San Francisco (CCSF). Intellectual Merit. Emphasis is placed on serving Community Colleges that are also Technology Centers in CA: 1) The California Community College System's Technology Centers; 2) The Engineering Technology Center, a statewide Project of the California Department of Education; and 3) NSF's Advanced Technology Education (ATE) Centers/Projects in California. Eight to ten Technology Centers will form CalWomenTech Leadership teams of approximately 10 members each, a mix of technology and math and science faculty, administrators, counselors and business partners.Activities and products planned for this community are: development of a CalWomenTech website to serve as both a knowledge base of best practices from the national education community and best practices from CalWomenTech Centers as they are implemented; development of template collateral recruitment materials; a 2-day WomenTech training sessions; follow-up consultation and on-site technical assistance to the community colleges to support implementation of Project strategies; periodic trainings on specialty topic areas; and facilitated peer-to-peer mentoring.The Services build on two previous grants to IWITTS: the WomenTech Project, which increased the number of women enrolled and retained in technology education in three national community college demonstration sites and a project that developed a teacher training video Futures: Preparing Young Women for High Skill,High Wage Careers. (IWITTS has sold thousands of copies the latter since 1997.) The PI has extensive experience serving as a consultant and technical assistance provider to the community college system including NSF ATE Centers. The collaborator from City College of San Francisco is a leader in technology education. Evaluation will be conducted by an external consultant from the Center for Research on Women at Wellesley College. Other partners include Dr. Marshall Gartenlaub who leads the Centers of Applied Competitive Technologies (CACT) as California Statewide Director and also chairs the California VTEA Advisory on Industry and Technology and Dr. Scott Griffith, Dean of the Engineering Technology Center, a statewide Project funded by the CA Department of Education - housed in American River College - and PI of the RoboEducators' ATE Project.Broader Impacts. The Extension Service will develop an infrastructure and a knowledge base on best practices to increase the participation of women across the system of California Community Colleges. The model is unique in its connection of a broad menu of best practice strategies to the field, with a feedback loop on implementation experience, and the goal of impacting a statewide system. While many gender best practice strategies exist, little has been done to test wider replication and infusion in a system or even multiple institutions. California's community college system is a good choice for this type of effort, due to the opportunity to impact many community colleges - it has the largest number in the country - and because California collects disaggregated gender data by program in each of its colleges and this information is available on a public database with only a one-year lag time, greatly facilitating evaluation of the success of the Extension Service.