Summer Technology and Engineering Program: An outreach program benefitting women engineering students from middle school through graduate school

The Summer Technology and Engineering Program (STEP) is hosted by the Society of Women Engineers student chapter at Northwestern University, and invites girls in 7^th and 8^th grade to explore engineering disciplines and envision themselves as future engineers. The participants work closely with undergraduate and graduate student mentors from engineering to do hands-on activities from across multiple engineering disciplines. This experience results in positive outcomes for women students involved at all levels. Girls find supportive role models in the SWE women, and mentoring relationships have developed. This presentation will describe the program, and discuss results of post-program surveys of middle school, undergraduate, and graduate students to show the impacts of the program on these various groups, and to provide a model for similar programs.