Douglass Project celebrates 25 years of mentoring, tutoring, and advising
Rutgers alumna Brittany Durgin took her first biology and chemistry classes as a ninth-grader at Old Bridge High School, fell head-over-heels for the subject matter, and never looked back.
Today a doctoral student at the University of Virginia, Durgin is exploring the molecular physiology of plaque in arteries, research that may one day help scientists prevent sudden death from heart attack and stroke.
Last month, Shari Horowitz became managing editor of Tropical Fish Hobbyist magazine, three years after receiving her bachelor degree in marine biology from Rutgers. The West Windsor resident shepherds the 112-page monthly, devoted to the science and art of fish-keeping, from conception through finished product.
Two Rutgers graduates, two career paths, one common denominator: Both women credit the Douglass Project – formally, the Douglass Project for Women in Math, Science, and Engineering – with encouraging them to recognize their abilities and follow their passions.
“The project is incredibly valuable in empowering women in fields that do not traditionally welcome them,” Horowitz says Durgin agrees: “It gives women an edge and provides them with everything they need to succeed,” she says.
Durgin believes even today – more than four decades into the modern women’s movement – female students are subtly steered away from science, technology, engineering, and math, the so-called STEM fields. From early childhood on, girls find few mentors and even fewer opportunities to explore these disciplines, academics agree; a recent New York Times article noted that women earn just 17 to 18 percent of the nation’s bachelor’s degrees in engineering and computer science, and a little over 40 percent of degrees in the physical sciences and math.
Since 1986, the project has aimed to buck that trend, not only by identifying and recruiting potential majors, but also by offering mentoring, tutoring, advising, and other support services to keep them from dropping out before graduation.
To mark the program’s 25th anniversary, its leaders have invited science writer Margaret Wertheim, set to serve as the first Discovery Fellow at the University of Southern California libraries, to speak on the relationship between science and the wider cultural landscape. The lecture will take place on Monday, November 14, at 5 p.m. at Trayes Hall on the Douglass Campus.
A three-year, $123,500 grant from the state’s Department of Higher Education launched the Douglass Project, with Ellen Mappen as its first director.
Now a senior scholar with the National Center for Science and Civic Engagement, Mappen recalls strategizing in her small office in the lower level of Voorhees Chapel, setting goals for what was one of the first programs of its kind in the country.
“We were really in the forefront of trying to provide support for women in science,” says Mappen. Her program would go on to win the National Science Foundation’s 1999 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring, and the 1990 Progress and Equity Award from the American Association of University Women.
Over the years, the project has received funding from the corporate and foundation sectors, including the AT&T Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, the Merck Institute for Science Education, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Durgin, who graduated from Rutgers in 2010 with a degree in cell biology and neuroscience, says her experiences as an undergraduate provided some unconventional opportunities – to say the least.
Tuesdays would find Durgin in an operating room at Robert Wood Johnson Medical Center, gowned and watching over the shoulder of Dr. Michael G. Nosko as he performed neurosurgery on an open brain.
“You’re like, oh my gosh, how amazing is this,” she says of the experience, which helped cement her determination to enter the field of medical research. “
A similar Aha! moment struck Horowitz as she steered a boat to an island off Australia’s Great Barrier Reef to search out marine samples. The trip formed the basis of her senior year honors thesis, which measured the effect of ocean acidification (an aspect of climate change) on marine crustaceans.
“Everything we’re doing is working toward creating an environment that’s positive, that reinforces the students’ identity,” says Elaine Zundl, acting director of the project and an assistant dean of Douglass Residential College. Too often, she observes, women who come in as first-years committed to a STEM major fall out of the so-called pipeline along the way.
Students in the Douglass Project can join 100 of their classmates in the living/learning community at Bunting-Cobb Residence Hall. Believed to have been the first of its kind in the nation, the arrangement brings them together with others interested in the same disciplines.
The fall semester of 2012 will see the launch of a similar residential community for women in engineering, Zundl says.
Douglass Dean Jacquelyn Litt says the project reflects the overall objectives of the Douglass Residential College.