The Club also provides a positive community for its older members, according to Gillis-Buck and Richardson.

“[Engaging with the young girls] puts them at the front lines of that work and will make them, as they move up the ranks, very sensitive ... leaders in the effort to draw women and girls into science,” Richardson says.

THE MERITS OF MENTORS

When WISHR Co-President Jennifer K. Cloutier ’13 returned home this past summer, she says she was shocked to find her favorite physics teacher instructing an all-male class.

“He asked me to come back sometime this year and talk about science, tell the girls not to be scared of it,” she says, noting that the episode re-energized her WISHR plans for the year.

One aim of both WISHR and WISE Words Magazine, founded this spring by Julia C. Tartaglia ’11 and her sister Christina E. Tartaglia ’09, is to increase the visibility of women already in science.

“Most people can’t name one female scientist, and we really want to change that,” Christina Tartaglia says.

Women’s Leadership Conference organizer Rachel M. Neiger ’12 also emphasized the struggle to attain and navigate female science networks.

“It’s sometimes hard for women to advance in science because there isn’t that network of female advisors, so it’s harder to get appointments and grants,” she says.

Leslie A. Rea ’12, who organized the first “Women in Science” panel in the WLC’s 24-year history, helped recruit School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Dean Cherry A. Murray to speak about how she became a leader in science and about the importance of mentoring.

Rea says her personal mentor has been Sujata K. Bhatia, who joined SEAS in May as the assistant director of undergraduate studies for Biomedical Engineering.

Bhatia says that many of the students she encounters worry about work-life balance and whether or not they have what it takes to succeed in engineering. Bhatia encourages women to speak up in class, so they can “learn that they have a unique voice to contribute to the field.”

WISHR Co-President Swara S. Kopparty ’12, an Applied Math concentrator notes that in the future she hopes WISHR’s bi-annual National Symposium for the Advancement of Women in Science will include speakers in fields like economics and computer science as well as hard sciences.

WIDENING THEIR IMPACT

When WISE Words won the i3 Competition in the spring of 2011, the organization received funding its founders hope will allow the publication to have a national impact.