The first step to starting your chapter is to fill out our “Become an Ambassador” form. You will then be prompted to schedule an onboarding call with one of our Regional Outreach Directors or Directors of Outreach. 

Please schedule only one time to meet with our representatives. They are high school students too, so please respect their time! 

No! Even having a call with an outreach representative isn’t committing! We want you to learn as much as possible about WiSTEM and what it means to be a WiSTEM ambassador before you are asked to formally create your chapter. 

Absolutely. Our organization welcomes students of all gender identities and expressions.

As WiSTEM resides in lots of locations, we have no formalized structure for adult advising in a chapter. Many of our chapters have a faculty advisor at their school, and this advisor is often a female STEM teacher, but other chapters are completely student-run. We only ask that you follow the guidelines that your school has put into place for clubs. 

Although most chapters are affiliated with high schools, we understand that there may be circumstances that bar a student from creating a chapter at their school. In that extenuating circumstance, your chapter may reside in your community and not in your high school.

As a chapter leader, you and your members will have the opportunity to attend a variety of virtual events put together by the WiSTEM leadership team. Events include speaker sessions, panels, and workshops with female STEM professionals, college students, and professors, and are held about once a month for an hour.

Our mentorship program pairs STEM professionals and college students with individual current high school students based on shared interests and goals. Mentors will be meeting with their mentee once or twice a month for a 30 minute Zoom meeting. This will be scheduled based on the mentor and mentee available times and is flexible. If you have any questions about the Mentorship Program, please reach out to our Director of Development at leadership@womeninstem.org

WiSTEM’s network of women of all ages, careers, and interests is our most important resource. Being able to connect with other students like you and women in different stages of all STEM fields is a great opportunity for growth and collaboration.

Please email our Website Manager, Kaylee at kaylee@womeninstem.org with the information that you would like removed from our website. 

Please email our President, Carolyn at

carolyn@womeninstem.org

with some information about which NAC member you would like to get in touch with about an event, as well as what particularly interests your chapter about this speaker. 

Please refer to the email you received after your onboarding call with a link to our Shared Google Drive. If you have lost this email, please reach out to our Director of Outreach at miranda@womeninstem.org to request that the link be shared with you again.

Please ask your chapter leader to forward you the member form. If they have lost this form, please email our Director of Outreach at miranda@womeninstem.org to request that the link be shared with you.

Please email our Directors of Outreach at outreach@womeninstem.org to request that they add you to our Slack channel, and remember to turn on your notifications!

Please find a student or (usually) up to three students that are interested in becoming ambassadors for WiSTEM and have one of them fill out our “Become an Ambassador” form. They will then be prompted to schedule an onboarding call with one of our Regional Outreach Directors or Directors of Outreach. They should all attend the same call with our representative, so that they all leave the call ready to get started on the same page. 

It is not required for educators to come to the onboarding call, but they are welcome to join if they wish! Regardless of their presence, the call will be directed towards the student ambassador. 

Encourage them! Suggest ideas you have for meetings and workshops to show them that you are invested, but ask them about their ideas too. Leave space for them to decide what they would like to do and take note of the general interests in the chapter. Stay in touch with them about their plans and make sure they are sticking to their goals of a certain number of meetings per month and delivering on promises they make to their membership, but don’t be too pushy. WiSTEM should be an alliance of like-minded individuals with similar interests working together to make the STEM field warmer and more inclusive. If being in charge of the chapter becomes a burden, this mission will be compromised. If you see burnout begin to fester in your leadership, encourage them to plan a fun meeting, or enlist an underclassman to do so. Pizza parties or fun experiments can be great bonding moments for a chapter, and can help to keep morale high. 

Please do your best to help alleviate some of the stress of abiding by school regulations and policies by being proactive and willing to help on any paperwork. In many clubs, the forms that are required to go on field trips, host guest speakers in-person, or stay at school past a certain time can discourage students from engaging in interesting opportunities. As a faculty advisor, one of your top priorities should be supporting the chapter in this way. 

If it is appropriate, offer connections to any professionals or college students that you may know that could be of interest to the chapter as a speaker. Utilizing alumni of a high school or friends of a faculty member can be a great opportunity to grow students’ network and help students find mentorship. At the very least, being able to see women like them find success in the STEM field is enough to encourage students. But don’t do all of the planning for them! Offer an email address and a story and send your student leaders to reach out on their own. This first step to building a connection is another benefit to networking skills. 

You can make tax-deductible donations here!

If you are interested in making a corporate donation (or would like to submit an alternate form of payment), please contact info@womeninstem.org.