1. Ritu Khare (GetMagic)
Esha Sahai (MIT)
Ira Pramanick (Google Inc.)
contact@getmagic.org
MIT LINC June 18
Remote Mentoring
Young Females in STEM
Through MAGIC

2. Motivation
• Gender Stratification and Limited Participation
– Women ONLY 24% of the STEM workforce in the US (American
Community Survey 2009)
– NOT due to lack of talent but due to discouraging societal
attitudes and unique challenges (Khoja et al. 2013, Gorman et al., 2010)
• More women in workforce could raise GDP by 5%
(Hewlett, 2012)
– Establish a nation-wide mentoring system that engages,
motivates, and inspires young females toward STEM
subjects in a personalized manner Henneberger et al. 2012)
Explores a remote mentoring approach to STEM mentoring

3. Why Remote Mentoring?
• Advantages
– Accessibility
– Personalization
– Efficiency
Only way to scale nation-wide and offer STEM
mentoring to girls from all segments of society

4. Goals of this Study
Introduce MAGIC
• Get More Active Girls in
Computing!
• Nationwide matching bridge
between
– Girls interested in STEM topics
– Women with successful
technology & computing careers
Assess Remote Mentoring
• We present the first data on
remote mentoring of young
females in STEM
– 5-year retrospective statistical
analysis
– Mentoring relationships across
at 7 US states
– 23 girls from 3 different types
of schools

5. MAGIC: Organizational Settings
• Structure
– Core-Team
– Board Members
– Mentors
• Mentoring Philosophy
– One-on-one mentoring
– MAGIC establishes each mentor-mentee pair
– Mentoring Sessions
– Noteworthy final projects
• Mobile app development
• Tic-tac-toe
• Website Development
• Google SketchUp based building design

6. Methodology and Data
• Data on remote
mentoring:2008-2013
• Data Collection Points
– Mentors and Mentees
– School
– Mentor-mentee
• Collected by the core team
in a narrative fashion
• Anonymized before sharing
with the key investigators
of this study
Entity Total
MAGIC Remote Mentors 16
Participating Schools 12
MAGIC Mentors 23
MAGIC Pairs 23
6

7. Results: MAGIC Mentors (Total 16)
• Highest academic degrees finished
– 9 doctorates, 5 masters, & 2 bachelors
• During recruitment, the candidates expressed strong
interest in inspiring more girls to pursue STEM and giving
back to the society and scientific community

8. Results: MAGIC Mentees (Total 23)
• Partnership: 8 schools (5 public, 2 private, 1 charter),
located in CA and MA
• Few mentees belong to four other schools that are
not officially associated with MAGIC, but allow
student-level participation

9. Results: Remote Mentoring Activities
• Distribution of Projects
– Computational based: 44%
– Game/Animation/Web: 36%
– Non-programming: 20%

10. Results: Remote Mentoring Challenges
• At least 7 mentees and 7 mentors reported no
challenges
• All the pairs successfully dealt with the challenges
either on their own or with support from the core team

11. Results: Impact on Remote Mentoring
• Mentors
– Positive and educational experience
– Enjoyed their relationship with the young mentees
– 6 offered assistance in MAGIC core and administrative activities
and expressed interest in becoming board members
– 3 did not find the relationship rewarding due to the lack of
mentees’ commitment and enthusiasm

12. Discussion: Organizational Outcomes
• Accessibility
– Associations with 3 different types of schools to reach out to
different societal sections
– Most mentors located in California and Massachusetts
– Majority of MAGIC core & board members reside in CA and MA
– Matched mentees and mentors across 7 different US states
• Personalization
– Mentees:
• Different familial backgrounds
• Diverse set of expectations
–MAGIC offered tailored services
• Variety of STEM skills (programming, creative, Web, conceptual)
• Variety of projects (technical and interpersonal)

13. Discussion: Organizational Outcomes
• Plan for Growth
– Stayed small for first few years
– Tens of schools and hundreds of mentees in the next
five years
– Challenge
• Replicating the energy and dedication of the small board of
directors
– Partnerships with universities, national labs, and
companies

14. Discussion: Lessons Learnt
• Popular communication tools
– Skype, Google Hangout, and phone
• Top learning choices
– Programming, topic-based learning, and creative skills
• Popular project choices
– Computational and game projects, and shadowing activities
• Mentors and mentees perceived different set of challenges.
– Mentees: Time management and logistics
– Mentors: delivery of content and social challenges
• Remote mentoring made a positive impact
– Mentees’ lives
– Building skills and self confidence
– Several mentees gained scientific visibility and significant career awareness

15. Conclusions and Future Work
• Introduced our unique organization, MAGIC
– Remotely yet closely engages girls to pursue STEM
– Highly personalized services
– Most pressing concern
• Recruiting mentors and mentees who have the passion,
time, and energy to help realize the vision of MAGIC
• Data-driven perception on remote mentoring
young females in STEM

16. Conclusions and Future Work
• Limitations
– Majority of the mentoring projects focused on
computer programming due to the backgrounds of
our current mentors
– Conduct the study with increased numbers of pairs
– Diversify the mentees’ locations and interests
– Study correlation between the challenges faced
and the mentoring outcomes

17. Acknowledgements
• Participating Schools
• MAGIC Mentees and Parents
• MAGIC Mentors
• Sponsors (Google, Teradata, and personal
donors)