For the Women of You@NJIT, Family is the Foundation for Success at NJIT
Twenty-five high school girls brought their sleeping bags to NJIT’s campus to experience a visit much more involved than a standard campus tour.
The students, all who have been accepted to NJIT, were invited through You @NJIT. The overnight campus experience is jointly run by NJIT’s Office of Admissions and the Murray Center for Women in Technology, a university-wide network that connects women students and faculty to each other and to the resources they need to succeed. The program pairs each highschooler with a current female NJIT student.
You @NJIT’s schedule featured a buffet-style dinner, a showing of “Urinetown: The Musical” at the Jim Wise Theatre, an ice cream social, private tours of the campus and an afternoon in NJIT’s Makerspace.
"This program is a fantastic way for girls to experience what NJIT has to offer, and the support system they will have when they enroll here. We have a responsibility to cultivate future generations of women studying, researching and working in STEM-related fields,” said Nancy Steffen-Fluhr, associate professor in humanities and director of NJIT’s Murray Center. Steffen-Fluhr’s commitment to gender equity, including her role as Co-PI on a National Science Foundation grant that looks to boost women scholars’ entrepreneurial participation, earned her an NJIT Excellence in Service Award last fall.
You @NJIT highlights efforts taken at NJIT to increase female enrollment, which has been steadily increasing. This past fall, NJIT’s record-setting incoming class featured the highest female enrollment and percentage of enrollment in school history.
Part of that effort has been demonstrating and communicating a sense of community, according to Marybeth Boger, dean of students and vice president of student affairs.
“It starts with family,” Boger said, who addressed the group with Sister Sledge’s 1979 hit “We are Family” playing in the background. “Every student who comes here should have a sense of safety and belonging. We are your home away from home.”
Antara Islam of South Orange, New Jersey, was one of the 25 students to attend. The Columbia High School senior plans on studying human-computer interaction and was happy to know the You @NJIT program and the Murray Center is working to encourage more female students to attend NJIT.
“This definitely made me more excited about the college experience,” said Islam. “Gender diversity is essential to creating an environment where people can feel welcome and safe, and I'm glad that this program introduced me to so many fantastic and hard-working women.”
Wrapping up the student experience was a hands-on demonstration in NJIT’s Makerspace, the largest of its kind in New Jersey at over 21,000 square feet and housing over $3 million in state-of-the-art equipment. The Makerspace offers students, faculty and staff a training-focused rapid prototyping facility that has been used to both develop aircraft to compete in SAE Aero competitions and rapidly manufacture face shields in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Makerspace, much like NJIT’s 130+ research institutes, centers and labs, encourages undergraduate participation right from the start of their academic career.
