Three colleges in central Pennsylvania are sharing a four-year, $749,506 grant from the National Science Foundation to increase the number of women working in STEM fields. Shippensburg University, Elizabethtown College, and the Harrisburg University for Science and Technology will team up with the Innovation Transfer Network, an organization that forms alliances between business and higher education. The PA STEM University Partnership for the Advancement of Academic Women program will assess the work climate for women in scientific fields at higher educational institutions in the area. They will then use that assessment to develop programs to recruit more women in these fields.
Kate McGivney, a professor of mathematics at Shippensburg University is the principal investigator for the project. A graduate of the University of Hartford, Professor McGivney holds a master’s degree from Northeastern University and a Ph.D. in mathematics from Lehigh University.