Mentoring Relationships Created Via Email Advance Women In Engineering, Say Contest Winners

(San Jose, CA) - Engineering and science students usually enter computer programming competitions, robotics contests, and science fairs. In a twist, MentorNet, an online mentoring service for engineers and scientists, invited its participating engineering and science students and professionals to enter an essay contest to write about their experiences. The nonprofit organization received eloquent and sometimes deeply emotional entries from students and professionals across the U.S. and beyond.

One of the essay winners, Brenda Liu, described how as an electrical engineering and computer science major, she found it difficult to find a female role model at the University of California at Berkeley. Her undergraduate affairs office recommended that she try MentorNet, as a helpful resource. Soon she found herself corresponding regularly via email with her mentor Zorina.

Not only did her mentor give her first-hand knowledge on being a professional woman in the technical workforce, but she "also gave me confidence to continue in my major, knowing that it is not impossible to be a successful professional woman," says Liu.

Liu found MentorNet to be a valuable resource and signed up for another year. Her second mentor helped her to make the decision to continue with school for an advanced degree. After another year with MentorNet, Liu landed a job at Intel Corporation.

Now, Liu has signed up with MentorNet to become a mentor herself. She is sharing her experiences and answering some of the same questions she had a few years back.

"It feels good to contribute back and reach out to the next generation, as well as receiving recognition from the proteges for the advice I gave. Now, I have come full circle, journeying from a protege to a mentor."

Since 1998, MentorNet has matched more than 11,000 science and engineering students with mentors who provide "real world" information, encouragement and advice that are otherwise often unavailable to women students in these male-dominated fields, in year-long email-based relationships. On June 7, the 2004 MentorNet Partners meeting brought together some of these mentors and their proteges. Despite having forged strong relationships via email, this was their first face-to-face meeting.

The MentorNet Partners meeting, designed for representatives of the colleges and universities, corporations, government labs and professional societies that work together on MentorNet, was held in conjunction with the WEPAN (Women in Engineering Programs & Advocates Network) National Conference in Albuquerque.

"The mission of MentorNet is to boost the participation and advancement of women in scientific and technical careers, one of the last extensively male-dominated professional arenas. Today more women are studying engineering and science than were a few decades ago, and many are even receiving their Ph.D.'s in these fields, but with women only representing 10% of the engineering workforce in the U.S., there is still a long way to go before we are benefiting from the full range of talent available," according to MentorNet's founder and CEO Carol B. Muller, Ph.D.

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MentorNet (www.MentorNet.net), headquartered at San Jose State University in San Jose, California, is a nonprofit 501 (c)(3) organization working to further women's progress in scientific and technical fields through the use of a dynamic, technology-supported mentoring program. MentorNet aims to advance women and society, and enhance engineering and related sciences, by promoting a diversified, expanded and talented workforce. In partnership with colleges and universities, corporations, government labs and agencies and professional societies, MentorNet is international in scope. Major funding is provided by the National Science Foundation, Alcoa Foundation, AT&T Foundation, IBM Corporation, Intel Foundation, Cisco Systems, and Microsoft Corporation.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants No. HRD-0001388, HRD-0123319, and SBE-0318510. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.