AAUW Work Smart” – AAUW Pay Negotiation Workshops for Women

“Tech Trek” – Residential summer scholarship camp for 8th grade girls

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Career Conference – Dynamic career conference for middle-school girls

“AAUW Work Smart”

 

AAUW Work Smart is an interactive two-hour workshop that teaches women effective techniques to negotiate their pay and benefits packages at different stages of their career. Workshops are free to the participants.

Women working full time in the United States typically are paid just 82 percent of what white men are paid, a gap of 18 percent — and it’s even worse for women of color. AAUW Work Smart is empowering women to close the gender pay gap – women’s economic security is our goal.

Whether negotiating for a new job or an earned raise or promotion, from the workshop you will:

• Learn to identify and articulate your personal value
• Conduct objective market research to benchmark a target salary and benefits
• Develop an arsenal of negotiation strategies and persuasive responses

There are two formats: live and online. To participate in the:

• Live workshop, visit salary.aauw.org/longbeach to register for the next scheduled workshop.
• Online workshop, visit salary.aauw.org.

A bit about our local program:

Between September 2016 and December 2019, the AAUW Long Beach branch

• conducted 30 live workshops, open to the public
• 400-plus participants came from throughout Southern California
• all volunteer-driven with local sponsors

Please contact: AAUWLongBeach@gmail.com and let us know if you would like to sponsor a workshop ($800), so that any number of individuals may benefit from your forward-thinking generosity, or would like to be involved in the implementation of the live workshops.

I got a 5% raise! I did what I learned in the workshop and it worked! – K.G., January 2019

 

“Tech Trek”

Tech Trek is a one-week residential summer scholarship camp for rising eighth graders which was founded in 1998 with start-up funds from an AAUW Educational Foundation Community Action Grant. The camp was designed to encourage young women to continue studying science and math in middle school and beyond. An AAUW Educational Foundation research report, “Shortchanging Girls, Shortchanging America,” indicated that young women tended to drop out of these courses during the middle school years.

Each campership is paid by AAUW Long Beach through donations from its members.  If you would like to make a tax-deductible contribution for Tech Trek, please email AAUW Long Beach at AAUWLongBeach@gmail.com for more information.

Tech Trek girls creating edible DNA and learning about spiders

   

Tech Trek’s goals are:

1. to encourage young women of all backgrounds who are entering 8th grade to take math and science courses each year throughout high school
2. to motivate these students to attend college
3. to inspire young women to consider careers in science, technology, engineering or math

The selection process begins with the Tech Trek committee identifying Title I schools in the Long Beach Unified School District for candidates.  The school’s principal is then notified of the program and requested to provide the name(s) of science and/or math teachers who would act as a focal point.  The teacher then recommend girls who would benefit from our camp.  The girls are requested to write a two-page essay detailing why they would like to attend our camp.  The committee members interview the nominated girls.  We then meet to determine our nominees and alternatives for camp.

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Career Conference

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Career Conference is organized by the AAUW Long Beach branch and held at Long Beach City College, Liberal Arts Campus. Women with careers in science, technology, engineering and math present workshops to middle-school girls to excite them about the possibilities of such careers and to encourage them to attend college.

A dynamic keynote speaker starts the conference with a message about overcoming obstacles and reaching one’s dreams. The girls then participate in two workshops to hear the details about careers, such as architect, astrophysicist, coroner, environmental engineer, mechanical engineer, optometrist, pathologist, software engineer, speech-language or structural engineer, and to explore hands-on activities. Over the past 17 years, 2691 girls have participated in the program.

Girls are specially selected to attend by showing academic interest in STEM fields.The February 2020 Conference partnered with Franklin Classical Middle School, Hamilton Middle School, Hudson K-8 School, Muir Academy, Powell Academy for Success, Stephens Middle School and Washington Middle School to enroll, transport, and supervise these fortunate young women, many of whom are from economically challenged households. This is often the first time these girls have been on a college campus and in college classrooms.

In 2015, the branch launched a five-year longitudinal study in concert with the Long Beach Unified School District to determine the effectiveness of this STEM career conference on middle-school girls in their pursuit of math, science and technology throughout high school and their enrollment in college. The 2015 cohort of 8th-grade attendees were surveyed in Spring 2019; the 2016 cohort of 8th-grade attendees are to be surveyed in Spring 2020.

More than 60 volunteers, comprised of AAUW Long Beach members and others, provide the support to put on this dynamic conference. We wish to thank the numerous businesses and individuals who contributed items to the girls’ conference bags and especially acknowledge our nine financial sponsors for their very generous support.