In July, SDWP joined Qualcomm’s Qcamp for an afternoon to talk about careers with 30 rising eighth-grade girls who have been attending the unique summer experience for three years.
Qcamp for Girls in STEM was developed and implemented by Qualcomm and the Institute of International Education (IIE). It was launched in 2014 for incoming sixth-grade girls from San Diego Unified School District. Throughout Qcamp, the students meet and engage with professional engineers, learn about engineering tools and their applications, explore the engineering design process, build their own projects, and meet new friends inside the Qualcomm® Thinkabit Lab™. This is the final year for this cohort; all 30 students will graduate this month.
SDWP’s Tina Ngo Bartel, Director of Business Programs and Research, and Sarah Burns, Research Manager, spoke with the girls about the world of work, regionally and nationally.
The SDWP team quizzed the girls on the Priority Sectors (Clean Energy, Life Science, Health Care, Information & Communication Technologies, and Advanced Manufacturing) and brought to life posters displayed around Thinkabit that highlight the in-demand jobs, wages, educational attainment and skills needed for jobs in each sector.
The posters, created by SDWP, are permanently on display at Thinkabit, which utilizes the posters as part of its curriculum when discussing career pathways and opportunities here in San Diego.
The group of girls are also part of a focus study. Qualcomm is partnering with the University of California, Berkeley and its Lawrence Hall of Science to conduct a deep study on the impact of these three summers and the potential influence the curriculum might have on the girls’ future. The preliminary results have shown that Qcamp has increased the participants’ intent to include STEM in their lives at home and in school; it has developed awareness and interest in STEM careers, and increased and sustained high levels of the dispositions, skills and knowledge that enable success in STEM learning.
Following the success that the first cohort has had in the past two years, Qcamp is expanding its reach and offering a two-week session for a new cohort of pre-sixth-grade girls; a one-week, first-ever session for pre-sixth-grade girls and boys; and a first-ever Qcamp for Girls in China.