Chevron Corporation announced a major financial contribution to support Techbridge Girls and the National Society Black Engineers (NSBE) to launch a SEEK Summer Camp designed for middle school girls of color.
The SEEK Summer Camp is a three-way collaboration between Chevron, NSBE, and Techbrige Girls. The camps are strategically located within Chevron’s core operating areas within Houston, Texas; New Orleans, Louisiana; San Francisco, California; and Washington, DC. The students will engage in a free three-week STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) focused, virtual summer camp. Students will explore and launch the wonders of robotics, drones, and coding through hands-on activities, guided by corporate volunteers and NSBE’s collegiate mentors. This major collaboration between the three organizations is an investment in tomorrow’s workforce. Between 13% – 14% of engineers and computer workers are Black or Hispanic and of those, only 2% are women of color. (Burrelli, 2013).
Chevron invests in STEM education to help create the next generation of problem-solvers and to encourage a broad and diverse range of young people to pursue STEM careers in order to tackle the diverse challenges ahead. Through its funding, Chevron champions equal access to quality education creates social and economic opportunities that improve lives and enable human progress. Over the past few years, Chevron has ramped up its priority in diversity and inclusion through initiatives in K-12 education which focus on marginalized demographics such as Black and Brown middle school female students.
“Chevron is proud to support the first SEEK program aimed to support middle school girls of color in partnership with the National Society of Black Engineers and Techbridge Girls,” said, Rhonda Morris, Chevron Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer. “We believe that education is a critical pathway to achieving social equity and enabling human progress. Our STEM programs are an investment in tomorrow’s workforce. It will take all of us to engage and empower students from every background to pursue STEM careers and achieve their full potential and we are excited to be a part of the journey.”
NSBE’s Summer SEEK camp, now in its 15th year, is the United States’ largest summer engineering program geared toward African American and other students from groups underrepresented in STEM. The SEEK camp model exposes students to basic STEM concepts; establishes a foundation of STEM knowledge, and experience that students can build upon in middle school, high school, and college; and, ultimately, increases the number of Black professionals in engineering.
The key features of the SEEK camp model are parental involvement and the STEM lessons are delivered by collegiate-level mentors/instructors. The mentor/instructors, most of whom are engineering majors and members of NSBE, will guide the girls through the curriculum and serve as role models for Black children who often lack that important advantage in pursuing STEM careers. This summer’s curriculum will focus on drones, robotics, and coding. NSBE will provide every student with curriculum kits and an Amazon Fire tablet to ensure access to the platform.
“Since Techbridge Girls was founded 21 years ago, the need to close the gap between the nation’s ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ in STEM education and STEM proficiency has only grown in importance. The National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) is delighted to have Techbridge Girls’ expertise in education and its commitment to social equity as vital resources for our 15th annual SEEK program,” said Charles Thompson III, Interim Executive Director of NSBE. “This partnership dovetails perfectly with the STEM engagement and STEM development aspects of NSBE’s new strategic plan,” he added. “Working in concert to offer SEEK to middle school girls this year will move both organizations toward our mutual goal of empowering children of color for the future.”
Nikole Collins-Puri, Techbridge Girls Chief Executive Officer says, “Oftentimes, we talk about the power of partnership and the impact that can happen when the strengths of the collective come together with a common agenda. But in the same breath, we are often unable to get the resources, time, and opportunity to build those partnerships in a way that can create greater impact. We are excited to have Chevron’s investment leading this important partnership in such a critical time. We are excited about NSBE’s partnership to expand their SEEK programs, so they are tailored, designed, and centered around girls’ interests, needs, and desire to use STEM as a tool for social change. We are hopeful that our partnership becomes the launching pad for future scale.”
For over two decades, Techbridge Girls has specialized in designing best-in-class STEM programming that is fun, open-ended, inquiry-based; that draws on girls’ interests and lived experiences; and that shows them that STEM can be used to creatively solve social problems. In this partnership, Techbridge Girls brings its expertise to infuse social/emotional learning, guide girls to their STEM lineage, and create a sense of community to the experience. Techbridge Girls will also train NSBE collegiate mentors and volunteers on how to introduce girls to STEM in age-appropriate, gender, and culturally responsive ways.
Chevron is one of the world’s leading integrated energy companies. Chevron believes affordable, reliable and ever-cleaner energy is essential to achieving a more prosperous and sustainable world. Chevron produces crude oil and natural gas; manufactures transportation fuels, lubricants, petrochemicals and additives; and develops technologies that enhance the company’s business and the industry. To advance a lower carbon future, the company is focused on cost efficiently lowering their carbon intensity, increasing renewables and offsets in support of their business, and investing in low-carbon technologies that enable commercial solutions. Chevron is based in San Ramon, CA. More information about Chevron is available at www.chevron.com.
With more than 700 chapters and more than 21,000 active members in the U.S. and abroad, the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) is one of the largest student-governed organizations based in the United States. NSBE, founded in 1975, supports and promotes the aspirations of collegiate and pre-collegiate students and technical professionals in engineering and technology. NSBE’s mission is “to increase the number of culturally responsible Black engineers who excel academically, succeed professionally and positively impact the community.” For more information, visit www.nsbe.org.
For 20+ years, Techbridge Girls has reengineered the way STEM education is taught, centering our girls’ brilliance and potential, with an emphasis on increasing STEM access, belonging, and persistence for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) youth from marginalized communities. We believe that without BIPOC girls’ experiences, values, interests, voices, and brilliance, we will never experience the full possibilities of what STEM can do for our world and we have set a goal to reach 1M girls by 2030. We reach girls through educator-driven STEM enrichment programs, one-time STEM events, and national partnerships which equip hundreds of educators with equity training. We are on this path because we believe no girl should be shut out or left behind in this STEM revolution. For more information, visit www.techbridgegirls.org.