The National Science Foundation recently awarded $250,000 to Sacramento State to create Fast-Track Math for Women, a program that will increase the number of women in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, fields.

The researchers of the program are Mridula Udayagiri, sociology professor, and Madeleine Fish, director of Sac State’s Mathematics, Engineering and Science Achievement program.

“I wanted to focus specifically on gender in STEM areas,” Udayagiri said. “I found that there is a great deal of underrepresentation of women in the sciences and mathematics. The STEM fields tend to be masculinized.”

Fast Track Math for Women aims to provide K-12 public school math teachers and community college professors with classroom techniques designed to create a friendlier environment for female students and to encourage them to do well in math, Udayagiri said.

“If a woman or anybody is going to go to these technical fields, the key classes that they have to do well in and keep taking are math classes,” Fish said.

This summer, the researchers will train up to five teams of math teachers and professors from public schools and community colleges. The training will involve flash-animated and web-based modules, training manuals and a two-week on-site practicum.

“What we’re hoping to do with this project is to put out some kind of manual or product, like a toolbox that math teachers can use in the classroom,” Udayagiri said.

The intent of the program is to make teachers more aware of gender issues in the classroom, Udayagiri said.

Research trends have shown that girls do well in math before they reach middle school, Udayagiri said.

“By the time they enter middle school, they stop getting interested in math,” Udayagiri said. “One of the reasons why girls are disengaging has a lot to do with what teachers are doing in classrooms. A lot of times, teachers don’t pay as much attention to girls.”

Research has shown that girls lack confidence in math classes. This lack of confidence comes from a lack of knowledge, Udayagiri said

“By the time they go into high school, they don’t have the proper preparation for pre-calculus and calculus,” Udayagiri said. “That means they opt out of taking those classes and once they opt out, they’re not going to think about pursuing a career in a STEM field.”

The program will also teach math teachers how to improve students’ math skills by focusing more on their weak areas.

“We believe that a lot of students, after taking a lot of years in math, very often end up with gaps in their math education, and those gaps make it impossible for them to really be math thinkers,” Fish said. “We have a math program that we think can help repair those gaps. What we’re doing is we’re isolating each student’s problem area or gaps and we’re filling those. So we’re going to teach math teachers how to administer that math program.”

Udayagiri and Fish said the program will not train university professors.

The NSF has an annual budget of $10 million devoted to STEM and gender-related programs and research, said Jolene Jesse, program director of NSF’s Research on Gender in Science and Engineering.

“We aim to reach practitioners with intervention strategies for women and girls,” Jesse said. “We’re reaching out to teachers with strategies that get women and girls into STEM careers.”

The NSF requires that programs funded by grants be evaluated. Sac State’s Institute for Social Research will conduct evaluations while the program is being implemented.

Sac State’s Institute for Social Research will assess the materials presented to the teachers and will conduct surveys throughout the program to measure change over time.

It will also conduct pretests and post-tests to teachers to assess how their knowledge of and attitude toward gender issues have or have not changed, said ISR director Ernest Cowles.

As part of the program, the teachers who attend the summer training will eventually train other teachers in their schools and districts.

The grant will be disbursed through University Enterprises, Inc.

“The campus takes an overhead that is used to compensate the campus for use of facilities and financial stewardship of grants,” Fish said. “For an NSF grant, this is about 30 percent ($75,000) of the total award.”

The other 70 percent of the grant will be spent on salaries for teachers, videographers, software designers, technical and curriculum writers, training supplies and travel expenses. The researchers are not compensated for their time on the project, Fish said.

“In this country, we just need more people going into technology, and we can’t exclude half the population,” Fish said. “We have to make an effort to get women and underrepresented groups all to consider careers in technical fields.”

Kristine Guerra can be reached at [email protected].