Girls and STEM
The creativity and way of thinking of girls and young women are important for solving technical problems and mastering challenges in STEM professions. Whilst more and more young women are showing an interest in careers and university courses in this area, most of them nevertheless still prefer to choose a typically “female profession”. A deficit which zdi wants to remedy.
That’s why the initiative offers a wide range of special activities. And is successful: Already today over 40 percent of the participants are female.
zdi Campus | Girls test STEM
zdi helps universities in NRW to develop activities through which to guide girls in their choice of university course. The target group is young women who have just completed their schooling and hold a university entrance qualification. Participants undertake a six-month practical internship in a STEM profession in an enterprise and in parallel complete a taster course in the respective study programme at a participating university.
A core element of this joint campaign is courses which focus on career guidance. To increase further the percentage of girls, the zdi Central Office helps the zdi Networks to organize special activities tailored to girls’ specific needs. Amongst others, help is given with resource planning, developing ideas and how to address the target group.
The zdi Central Office organizes training measures for regional zdi players (educational institutions at school and apprenticeship level as well as representatives of enterprises) in the area of STEM and girls’ advancement. The support package ranges from information on ways to communicate successfully with the target group to how to develop regional strategies to attract more young women.
zdi Robotics Competition: Robot Performance
The Robot Performance category in the Robotics Competition is open primarily to girls. Teams create their own choreography which narrates an exciting story. They design a little stage and programme a dance routine for their robots. The show ends with a short presentation on how the performance evolved.