{"id":56459,"date":"2019-02-28T08:25:07","date_gmt":"2019-02-28T13:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=56459"},"modified":"2024-09-01T09:55:51","modified_gmt":"2024-09-01T13:55:51","slug":"vasseur-supporting-mature-female-students-enrolling-in-university-stem-programs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2019\/02\/vasseur-supporting-mature-female-students-enrolling-in-university-stem-programs\/","title":{"rendered":"VASSEUR: Supporting mature female students enrolling in university STEM programs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brock Biological Sciences Professor Liette Vasseur wrote a piece recently published in The Conversation<\/em><\/a> about the needs for additional supports to encourage mature female students in STEM programming.<\/p>\n

Vasseur writes:<\/p>\n

Women face many barriers when it comes to post-secondary education, and this is especially true in\u00a0science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), as well as in traditionally male-dominated trades like welding. These barriers are even higher for mature female students \u2014 those who are at least 24 years old \u2014 who are often discriminated against when they want to pursue their studies.<\/em><\/p>\n

My biology master\u2019s student, Heather VanVolkenburg, is a mature student who returned to post-secondary education after having a family. Just before the\u00a02017 Gender Summit in Montr\u00e9al, we were discussing women in STEM and the challenges they face when I discovered that mature students seemed to encounter even more barriers than younger women. This made me reflect on a simple question: are certain groups of people, especially mature students, being discriminated against in higher education?<\/em><\/p>\n

Current landscape<\/em>
\nDuring our discussion panel at the Gender Summit, this question came up again by a person in the audience. Some participants were surprised when I mentioned how mature female students face barriers in STEM and trades education. This was the first step towards Heather and I preparing a reflection paper published by the\u00a0Canadian Commission for UNESCO\u2019s IdeaLab, which sought to determine the current situation of mature female students in STEM and trades and identify the barriers they face.<\/em><\/p>\n

We found that mature students understand better their role in society and want to contribute. This is one of the reasons they are interested in returning to higher education. There are, of course, other reasons. Among them are\u00a0new career options, the need for more credentials and career prospect improvement. Self-interest is often suggested, and though this might have been true a few decades ago, I would caution people against thinking that\u2019s the main reason.<\/em><\/p>\n

Continue reading the full article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brock Biological Sciences Professor Liette Vasseur wrote a piece recently published in The Conversation about the needs for additional supports to encourage mature female students in STEM programming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45641,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,6,41],"tags":[49,3231,3666],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56459"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56459"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56460,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56459\/revisions\/56460"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}