Looking for your next career move in STEM? Registration is now open for SWE’s Virtual Career Fair happening this May designed for professionals with 3+ years of experience. Connect with employers, explore new opportunities, and take the next step in your career—all from wherever you are!

NCWIT’s K-12 programs joined forces to amplify the great work already underway to broaden participation in computing — from inspiring students to enabling the individuals that advise them! In this session, we introduced attendees to NCWIT’s K-12 programs and resources designed to support BPC efforts and prepare students for the workforce of the future. By watching, you will learn about NCWIT’s K-12 Alliance programs and the many free resources available, hear stories from AiC students about their experiences in the AiC Community, and gain insights from student advisors on strategies that help students connect computing with workforce readiness. The recording also explores practical, ready-to-use STEM activities from Teach Engineering and includes breakout discussions with program representatives. Together, these elements equip you with new tools and knowledge to empower your students throughout the academic year.

Explore how small, deliberate actions you can take every day — amplifying a colleague’s idea or inviting a quieter voice into the conversation — can create a powerful ripple effect, accelerating innovation and success across your entire organization. Learn how to recognize the subtle slights and other interactions that erode trust and stifle innovation, and walk away with practical “microbehaviors” you can put to work immediately, regardless of your role or title. Weaving these simple practices into our every day interactions is an efficient and effective way for creating the kind of culture where everyone can truly thrive.

From AT&T to NASA, women working as computers performed the calculations that made modern science possible. In the early 1900s, computing joined teaching and nursing as one of the few careers open to college-educated women, and it opened doors that few other professions could. New York City native Sallie Pero lived with her family while she attended Barnard College, the all-women liberal arts school affiliated with Columbia University. Only 16 when she began her studies in 1909, Pero excelled at math and athletics. Between field hockey, basketball and baseball, Pero played a sport every season. Physical activity paired well with her studies. When she graduated in 1913, Pero received Barnard’s Kohn Mathematics Prize and went on to complete a master’s program in mathematics at Columbia University. She started out as a substitute teacher in New York City schools but left teaching to work as a computer at American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) in 1915. In the first decades of the 1900s, computing was emerging as a potential career, in addition to teaching and nursing, for women graduating from college. In fact, for scientifically inclined women, such as Pero (1893-1981), working as a computer opened the door to a career in scientific research.

The story of Christina Koch’s journey from childhood dreams of being an astronaut to floating outside the International Space Station sounds like a classic tale of the modern age. And soon, she will add lunar voyager to her long list of achievements. From her early years in western Michigan to her upbringing as a young adult and college student in North Carolina, and then a career in research and engineering, Koch built a solid foundation of achievements to qualify her for the role of mission specialist on the first human mission to reach the Moon since 1972. Koch and two of her Artemis II crewmates, Victor Glover and Jeremy Hansen, will also set individual milestones as they become the first woman, Black man, and Canadian, respectively, to reach such a distance from Earth and peer back at it from beyond the Moon. This new generation of space explorers, led by Navy Capt. Reid Wiseman, will offer new perspectives on human spaceflight’s ability to reframe the existence of Earth hanging in the darkness of space.

In this episode of Diverse, Eva Erickson, Ph.D. candidate in engineering at Brown University and the first openly autistic contestant on Season 48 of Survivor, shares how the grit, resilience, and analytical thinking she built in STEM showed up in one of the most competitive environments out there. From breaking barriers in engineering to competing on a global stage, Eva’s story is a powerful reminder that there’s no one path to success.

A professional French horn player and six scientists boarded a ship headed to Antarctica for one month. What sounds like the start of an odd joke actually describes a group of women who set sail for the icy continent on the R/V Sikuliaq last winter. The researchers' main goal for the expedition was to study sea ice and the organisms that call it home, but their mission carried deeper significance: proving that women do belong in the polar sciences. The National Science Foundation funded a grant for the scientists, from universities across the country, to research and understand different aspects of sea ice on the eastern side of the West Antarctica Peninsula. The six women were originally set to join the foundation's chief scientist training program, where early-career scientists spend weeks on a research vessel collecting data and conducting experiments for their studies. This training was slated for summer 2024 but was abruptly canceled just 36 hours before the team was supposed to depart due to mechanical problems with the ship.

In a world where AI is everywhere, shaping how we learn, create, and make decisions, how are we preparing students to understand it? This National AI Literacy Day, Girls Who Code is helping students go beyond the output. Their Clubs curriculum featuring AI and machine learning introduces 10 foundational lessons designed to help upper elementary students understand how AI works and explore its real-world impact. Designed by educators for educators, the unit includes everything you need to teach with confidence. You can download their free AI Literacy Unit to learn foundational lessons on AI and machine learning concepts including feature extraction, pattern recognition, and training data. 10 plugged and unplugged lessons build learners’ understanding of how AI works and the real-world impact and considerations of AI.

Raise your voice for women in STEM. From March 30 through April 12, congressional representatives will be in their home district offices. Sydney Woods, a member of the AWIS Advocacy Committee, offers advice on how contact and meet with your representatives to advocate for women in STEM.

Do professional platforms like you better as a man? AWIS member Marissa Russo investigates whether you need to choose between using language that gets visibility or language that authentically reflects yourself and your work on LinkedIn.