Black Girls Do STEM: Making STEM careers reality

Nationally, less than four percent of Black girls are enrolled in Calculus (NCES, n.d.) and 25% of all schools with majority Black and Latinx populations do not offer math courses beyond Algebra II (Office of Civil Rights, 2014). In fact, Missouri just waived the Algebra II requirement for high schoolers if they were not exposed to Algebra I as a middle school  student. The result is that some Missouri children can graduate high school having only completed a single math class, Algebra I. In the St. Louis region alone, based on the City of St. Louis Equity Indicators report of 2019, White students are four times more likely to participate in advanced math and science at the high school level than their Black peers. According to the National Science Board, access and achievement in advanced math and science in high school continues to be the number one indicator for post-secondary success in a STEM major (NSB, 2018). Furthermore, at a national level, White girls are four times more likely to be in a gifted and talented program in K-12 education compared to their Black female peers. This means that Black youth, particularly Black girls, are being excluded from post-secondary success beginning in middle school for this reason Black Girls Do STEM is creating equitable access, equitable opportunity and equitable education in STEM to Black girls within our community.  

Black Girls Do STEM provides a seven-year continuous pathway for Black girls beginning in 6th grade through to university and workforce entry. The 6th-9th grade girls engage in a Saturday Academy community-based STEM exploratory learning program for 8 months (40-hours) in community. This programming promotes innovation and understanding of many problem-solving approaches and design methodologies. Students are introduced to the engineering design process, design thinking framework to help them utilize tools to better define and understand problems and create solutions. The girls also participate in group mentoring with BGDSTEM’s network of Black women in STEM. BGDSTEM is aimed at increasing curiosity and interest in STEM coursework in traditional K-12 educational environments and beyond into higher education and career development. We know from research that mathematics and scientific identities are strengthened when Black girls’ interests in these areas are nurtured (Carlone & Johnson, 2007; Joseph, 2021). Another part of the 6th-9th grade program are biannual industry tours where the girls tour local STEM companies to gain occupational awareness. Boeing, Verizon, and The Saint Louis Zoo are examples of partners who provide these opportunities. The tours promote understanding of the various STEM careers and give a first-hand view of the application and hands-on experience of that field. The girls can see connections between the workshops and real-life STEM professions. Some of the current workshops include a focus on biotechnology, geographic information science (GIS), and Fashion Technology: 3D design and development. 

Our high school through to college strategy is our empowerment, preparation and placement program which consist of an array of support services such as math and science tutoring, ACT test preparation, university tours and partnerships, internships and externships and post-secondary planning. We have also established a virtual collegiate community under our post-secondary planning initiatives to create a space for girls transiting into undergraduate programs as STEM majors. 

Black Girls Do STEM allows scholarship through curating a cultural safe space for building confidence, mental toughness and resilience in Black girls using design thinking, engineering and scientific frameworks during hands-on STEM workshops.  Empowering Black girls through access and exposure, creating a learning community where they can simply exist, fail fast and try again. Bringing mentors and real-world role models from their community to form meaningful connections and impactful relationships with them, for life. 

BGDSTEM targets 1st generation STEM exposure and low-income communities in the city of St. Louis which includes the following zip codes in the city of St. Louis: 63106, 63107, 63111, 63109, 63112,63113, 63115, 63147 and North St. Louis County of 63137, 63136,63121, 63113, 63138,63033, 63135. BGDSTEM defines First Generation STEM Exposure as girls living in a household where their parent or legal guardian has NO educational background in STEM and/or doesn’t work within the STEM workforce. The STEM workforce is defined based on the Science and Engineering Indicators Report published annually by the National Science Board. The above zip codes correspond to areas of historical underemployment in communities with 75% of residents living below poverty, with over 90% of student populations receiving free or reduced lunch. 

These students are in need of quality STEM educational access that is lacking in the public education offered to them currently in their direct communities.

BGDSTEM Founder and Managing Director, Cynthia Chapple, had enough of the  racial isolation in STEM workplaces. She had worked for many years as a research and development chemist  and frequently was the only Black woman in these spaces.  She saw very few people who looked like her in  STEM leadership positions. As she began to reflect on her upbringing and education, she realized lack of  exposure to STEM combined with limited encouragement to pursue a career in STEM led to significant attrition  among her Black female peers. Cynthia’s lived experiences align with current research because Black women  are disproportionately underrepresented in STEM beginning with K-12. Therefore, her desire and reasoning to start Black Girl Do STEM is deeply personal and rooted in a lived understanding of the problem. Having worked in manufacturing in the heart of saint louis city, she worked within a deeply divested marginalized black community daily. Cynthia came to know community members and attend community events and this area is one of the current target zones in which we serve.

Our first full time hire is Kayla Harrison, a traditional educator who has worked in multiple states within the Kipp Charter school Network and brings a wealth of knowledge from her educational background to build robust educational and equitable structures within our programming model. 

We have at this time part- time facilitators who range between college STEM graduate, STEM professional and traditional educators, we are a multi- generational team of professionals leveraging knowledge and experience to curate the best quality social, cultural, and educational environment for girls. 

Our board consists of an array of Black women in STEM and education with a combined 30+ years of experience. These professionals have worked across sectors and specialization and bring a textured full understanding of the problem and solutions through both lived experience and scholarly learning. One of our board members also grew up in St. Louis within the Ferguson, Mo community. 

Black Girls Do STEM currently serves 141 students across the 6th-12th grade pathway. We have worked with over 200 girls with about 10% of them learning virtual from outside of the direct St. Louis Metropolitain region. We currently have a 63% year over year retention rate for girls within 6th-9th grade continuation in the program. 

As Black Girls Do STEM is within the growth phase of development we are truly looking to operate in a learning and development phase; looking at theory of change, planning for the next big strategic plan, and or understanding all the data we are collecting to lead to the best decision making possible as we scale. We will after this year have a complete 3 years of data on our core program STEM Saturday Academy with middle school aged students, the ability to synthesize and understand our tools and elevation analysis will be critical to how we grow, lead and scale. We look forward to these resources as well as the network of partners and other ventures who have been where we are and successfully charted the scaling water with great results. At this time, this is the exact community and network Black Girls Do STEM needs and desires. I think this makes us a perfect match for the Solve challenge. 

Cynthia Chapple is an African American woman, born and raised on the south side of Chicago in a community very similar to the communities we serve within the St. Louis Metropolitan area. Cynthia herself is a first generation college graduate, a child of parents who did not obtain college educations. This allows her to empathize and build transformational relationships with both students and parents in the community. She deeply understands the needs and the roles that low educational access and economic power plays in parents not having the means to afford their girls quality educational experiences as well as the feelings of underestimation that comes with a less than equitable educational system that is imparted on marginalized youth. Her presence at community events and programming is constant and girls and parents have direct access to teach, learn and grow beside her. She leads by being in close proximity to the work, the community, and the population served residing within the target communities we serve.  Our program manager also lives in Ferguson, Mo a suburb of St. Louis and this area currently represents about 50% of the current population we serve. 

Black Girls Do STEM is innovative because we are a unique approach for developing the whole girl by empowering them with STEM literacy, skills, and foresight for the careers of the future. 

Compared to youth serving gender specific organizations such as Girls Inc. or Girls Scouts of America we specifically use STEM career fields and 21st century skills building to create a sense of self-worth, confidence, self-efficacy and a sense of their STEM capabilities simultaneously through hands-on, learning by doing type of curriculum and practices.  Comparatively to other gender equity in technology initiatives such as Girls Who Code  and Black Girls Code, Black Girls Do Engineer rather than a simple focus on one disciple we take a multidisciplinary approach connecting science, technology, engineering and mathematics and mapping content to a career pathway such as Cosmetic Science, Geographic Information Systems, Fashion Technology and teach how the problem solving and technical skills transfer across industry and play interconnected roles in careers. I think our approach has an opportunity to change the market by shifting the market to a focus on transferable skill building and methodologies that transcend industries and produce more youth with problem solving and project management skills outside of their area of technical expertise, making them more marketable as professionals. I think university and academia has already caught up to application of knowledge and have released in the last decade a slew of new interdisciplinary majors within STEM. I think focusing on teaching even at the middle school and high school level in this way will broaden the market and focus less on specific industries and technical expertise which would be for the best in a fast growing and changing world. 

In the next year we plan to serve 160 girls within the STEM Saturday program, bringing on two new programming sites through community partnerships.  We plan to secure 2 additional EPP partnerships and host 30-40 girls in EPP services in the 2023 and 2024 years, with 60% of students in the pathway participating in a research internship prior to their 11th and 12th  grade school years. At this time we are soliciting partnerships with academic research institutions and corporations. 

In the next five years we plan to scale and reach up to 400 girls annual across our seven-year 6th-12th grade pathway. In 2024 we will do our next strategic plan to start in 2025 where we will outline the strategic partnerships, programming logistics and community partnership necessary to get us to 400 girls and be able to maintain program continuity most efficiently. Finally, we hope to hit our long-term metric with 75% of girls exiting 12th grade and entering the STEM workforce or a post-secondary education as a STEM major across the five years. 

We are currently tracking attendance on a monthly basis and tracking multiple year retention of girls returning and matriculating through the pathway. We view these indicators as student engagement, 21 century skill development, program effectiveness and STEM career interest and knowledge increase. We also conduct evaluation at the end of every student workshop and each program offering conducts pre and post survey annuals to couple with the quantitative data of attendance and retention percentages. 

Black Girls Do STEM  has conducted official focus groups annually with students and parents with students and parents within our organization examining the core program components or each program offered. For our STEM Saturday Academy program which features a core STEM career pathway, mentoring with Black women in our network, Social Emotional Learning and experiential learning field trip on to academic and industry locations. Focus group reports from parents and students show these activities increased self-efficacy and confidence as parents note their middle schoolers are opting in more advanced math as young as 8th grade, after two years in the program. Girls report feeling more empowered to ask questions in traditional learning environments, feeling more STEM capable after meeting with Black women in STEM and growing interest in a field after visiting a site and talking with a real-world professional. Lastly, 100% of both parents and students report learning about a STEM career field they previously had no knowledge of, hitting our STEM career exploration and occupational awareness target wonderfully.  These focus groups lead us to understand what we are doing is working to advance confidence in STEM careers, build knowledge and exposure to STEM careers, and advance confidence to begin taking the practical steps even as middle schools to set themselves up for a STEM career. 

Black Girls Do STEM is a data -oriented organization to uses data to inform decision making, to streamline processes, and organize and analyze information. Some of the technology tools we use to drive our organization are google suite specifically data studio and predictive analytical software, click-up project management tools, Canva, Slack all with other AI integrations to enhance communication, analytics and process flow. 

FT Staff Member: Kayla Harrison 

PT Staff Member: Samantha Autry; Deonshae Williams, Lauren Campbell, Joy Rogers, Jasmine Aladefa, Kortney Fauntleroy; Kokeb Ansarizadeh; Camille Young, Cynthia Davis. 

Contractors: Keyanna Evans; Rumona Ray; Sarah Shelton; Dr. Treasure Shields Redmond

Black Girls Do STEM was founded as an official nonprofit in March of 2019, however, the community Saturday workshops began in June of 2018, whereas the social media presence advocating for Black women in STEM began in 2015.  

Black Girls Do STEM in an intergenerational team of majority Black women from the staff, board to the volunteers. We have an equity approach to welcome culture, identity, truth, shared power and skill building across all persons engaging with our organizational assisting in reaching our organizational goals. This allows for us to build a culture of input all the way from the bottom up including our community of volunteers, parents, students, advisors and staff. Our culture is transformative due to the transformative leadership of our founder Cynthia Chapple, and her high regard for hearing all voices and shaping an organization that truly can represent the best of and for Black Girls. Nonetheless, we welcome the ideas, gifts and talents of all people who seek gender equity and STEM and who desire to take a targeted approach alongside us for the cultural inclusion of Black girls in STEM spaces. 

Currently, our executive board consists of three Black women. With an advisory board of 2 Black men, 1 additional Black woman and 1 white woman. The current executive leader of the organization, Cynthia Chapple, is also a Black woman. With an organizational staff where 1 out of 10 members does not identify as a Black woman. We have a student advisory board of 1 black student, 1 student who identifies as Black and Hispanic and  1 mixed race student. 

Black Girls Do STEM has a direct services model, as we directly provide services to students and therefore their families for free, making them our key beneficiaries. The services are delivered as out of school time services typically taking place at a community location on the weekend.  Our key beneficiaries need our STEM programming and educational services due to lack of equity in education and access to high quality STEM programming within their neighborhoods. This is of specific interest to school districts for students from under-resourced school districts to have educational enriching experiences outside of school time learning, to increase their zeal for school and reinforce their educational learning which all in turn can lead to better testing outcomes for children whose needs are currently not being met by public education institutions. It is an economic imperative for local city and state governments as well as corporations to care about the capabilities for schools to produce future citizens that can make a positive contribution back to the region and the world, who will have employable and transferable skills ready to shape the world of tomorrow. Therefore, the family foundations ( individual philanthropist) , corporate funders, local and state governments as well as school district partners are our revenue drivers. 

Black Girls Do STEM is working now on a multi-year (5 year) fundraising goal to be completed by the end of this year. The plan over the last couple of years is to diversify revenue streams decreasing dependence on grants while increasing corporate sponsorship, event and individual donor campaign income. Our current grant strategy is to build one new relationship annually for a foundation or corporation and receive grant funding while maintaining all funding partners from the previous year. We also instituted merch as a recurring fundraising and sale products at a 200% up-charge at local vending events, and we plan to put together fee for service packages for other non-profit organizations as earned revenue model in the next five year plan.

Our current percentage goals is for foundation and corporate grants to collectively make up 70% of the dollars raised with 30% coming from other revenue streams mentioned above. 

We have been funded now for the third consecutive year by Boeing corporation under their global umbrella, as they are headquartered in St. Louis, for manufacturing operations, at the $50,000 amount. We were for the first time this year guaranteed a higher funded amount and await the decision currently on the amount of additional funding we will receive. We have established a two-year funding relationship with NewSchool Venture Fund, a national education venture fund accelerator program, and we are in our second year of funding and were funding $50,000 more than year one for a total of $205,000 funding this year.  We are excited to say that 80% of all of our foundation and corporate funders have funded for at least 2 years consecutively, some even 3 years, while we have successfully brought on 2 new relationships annually. While the repeat funding has increased across 50% of our partnership. This gives the credibility and confidence as we build out this five-year plan that we can not only secure funding but substantially relationships locally, nationally and globally.