Creating Web Explorations In Science And Engineering

A summer internship program is held at Iowa State University each year for undergraduate and high school women in science and engineering fields. In the summer of 1995 two high school women in this program, co-authors Roberts and Sandberg, created world-wide-web based multimedia explorations into topics in science and engineering which are common in our daily lives. The prototype documents placed on the web were well researched and scientific explanations of the phenomena at hand, but explained so that the average 6th or 7th grader (the target audience) could understand them. These two students were directly supervised by an undergraduate woman, co-author Collier, herself a former intern in this program. The purpose of the internship program is to give young women experience in research laboratories under the mentorship of an Iowa State professor, thereby solidifying their interest in SEM (Science, Engineering, and Mathematics) careers. This particular research project not only provided such a research experience for the two high school women but it also provided an internship in supervising researchers for the undergraduate student as well as allowing a mentoring relationship for all three students with a professor, co-author Genalo