GSE/SGER: Developing An Extension Service Proposal to Recruit Middle School Girls to Information Technology Careers

这一探索性项目将建立基础设施，为弗吉尼亚州农村、阿巴拉契亚地区和周边各州建立推广服务。该项目旨在显著和持续地提高人们的兴趣，这将导致在通常缺乏服务的中学女孩中选择信息技术(IT)职业。规划年将用于发展学校、社区和行业与利益相关者的伙伴关系和关系；制定涵盖整个项目的严格评估计划；并巩固统一的变革计划，以增加多样化、缺乏服务的地区中学女生对IT职业的兴趣和选择。INTELLECTUAL PROCESS--该项目建立在之前对女性科技工作者(WIT)研究团队的资助基础上，以调查女性追求IT职业的障碍，开发和传播DVD，支持父母、教师、顾问和顾问作为女孩在职业决策中的合作伙伴，以及多篇同行评议的期刊文章、一本书、国际研究会议和国家演示文稿。它将使用跨学科团队的方法来洞察我们对阿巴拉契亚农村文化的理解，以及如何发展一种可在全国复制的变革模式，使用学校辅导员接触中学女孩，以增加对IT职业的兴趣和选择。BROADER Impact--该项目的跨学科方法将建立一个最佳实践的基础设施和知识库，以提高阿巴拉契亚农村中学女孩对IT职业的兴趣和选择。该模式的创新之处在于，将中学辅导员作为实践社区，并将这个社区与广泛的最佳实践战略和研究联系起来，并从实施经验中建立反馈回路，以进一步为实践提供信息。弗吉尼亚州和毗邻的阿巴拉契亚地区是这一努力的良好选择，因为它增加了IT公司，并有机会开发农村模式，从中学早期就有效地影响全国IT劳动力。

This exploratory project will create the infrastructure for establishing an extension service for the rural, Appalachian regions of Virginia and surrounding states. The project seeks to engender a significant and sustained increase in interest which would lead to the choice of an information technology (IT) career among typically underserved middle school girls. The planning year will be spent in developing school, community, and industry partnerships and relationships with stakeholders; developing a rigorous evaluation plan that encompasses the entire project; and solidifying a unified program of change to increase the interest and choice of an IT career among a diverse, underserved regional population of middle school girls.INTELLECTUAL MERIT--This project builds on previous grants to the Women In Technology (WIT) research team to investigate barriers to females' pursuit of IT careers, the development and dissemination of a DVD and Facilitator's Guide to support parents, teachers, counselors and advisors as partners to girls in career decision-making, and multiple peer-reviewed journal articles, a book, and international research conference and national presentations. It will use an interdisciplinary team approach to provide insights into our understanding of rural, Appalachian cultures and the development of a model of change that can be replicated nationally using school counselors to reach middle school girls to increase the interest and choice of an IT career.BROADER IMPACT--The interdisciplinary approach of this project will develop an infrastructure and knowledge base of best practices to increase rural Appalachia middle school girls' interest and choice of an IT career. The model is innovative in focusing on middle school counselors as a community of practice and connecting this community to a broad range of best practice strategies and research with a feedback loop from implementation experiences to further inform practice. Virginia and the contiguous Appalachian region of states is a good choice for this effort given its increase in IT companies and opportunity for developing a rural model for effectively impacting the national IT workforce from an early developmental middle school age.