New Center for Gender Equity in Science and Technology Opens at Arizona State University

Kimberly A. Scott, an associate professor in the department of women and gender studies at Arizona State University, is the founding executive director of the Center for Gender Equity in Science and Technology, which officially launched at the university earlier this month.

The center will serve as a central hub — the first and only one of its kind — for the facilitation of research, building of programs and advocacy specific to African American, Latina, Asian American and Native American women in their pursuits in STEM fields. The goal, said Dr. Scott, is to “make a systemic impact on issues of disparity that are affecting our society as a whole.”

In 2007, Dr. Scott founded CompuGirls, an online platform aimed at girls ages 13 to 18 that teaches the skills needed to succeed in technology fields. Last fall, Dr. Scott was appointed by President Obama to lead the National Academic STEM Collaborative. The effort is a consortium of nine universities and nine nonprofit organizations that has the goal of creating and sharing best practices for increasing the number of girls and young women who are interested in pursuing careers in STEM fields.

Dr. Scott is the co-editor of the book Research in Urban Educational Settings: Lessons Learned and Implications for Future Practices (Informational Age Publishing, 2011) and co-author of the book Kids in Context: The Sociological Study of Children and Childhoods (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005).

Dr. Scott is a graduate of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she double majored in art history and French literature. She holds a master’s degree in education from Long Island University in New York and an educational doctorate from Rutgers University in New Jersey.