Want to Inspire Youth to Pursue STEM Careers? Close the Mentoring Gap.
October 29, 2020
At MENTOR, October marks STEM Mentoring Month. This is the perfect time to shine a light on the programs and mentors preparing young people for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers. As part of our commemoration of STEM Mentoring Month, we collaborated with our partners, TheDream.US, the nation’s largest college access and success program for DREAMers, and Microsoft, to host a virtual STEM career coaching event to leverage mentoring as a tool to close the networking gap.
The networking gap has both social and economic implications in a young person’s life. Having a supportive and connected network can be instrumental to a mentee looking to join a career field that they may not have access to otherwise. Additionally, mentorship is a retention tool. Mentors can offer mentees support to help them stay on a career path and achieve progressive growth over time.
But historically, networking has been seen as inaccessible to many, so events like these help mentees gain the experience and practice needed to continue this work moving forward. TheDream.US scholar, Genesis, shared, “I found out that I don’t hate networking as much as I thought I would. It always seems like a daunting task. Everyone was very nice, and we learned a lot. I learned to be confident because I have something to offer.”
As the event went on, we heard from many volunteer career coaches from Microsoft and TheDream.US scholars about the value of making space for authenticity, getting comfortable taking professional risks, and normalizing our differences. The last idea was especially important. Strong networks feature people who have a shared interest in a specific career path and folks with different career ambitions and years of experience. Another scholar said it best, “It’s interesting talking to someone who is not in the same field and you still get valuable information from hearing their story and the advice they share.”