Drexel and TechGirlz Team to Connect Middle School Girls with Technology

Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business and TechGirlz announced a wide-ranging partnership designed to expand the number of middle school girls receiving technology instruction. This collaboration is part of the recently announced TechGirlz 20k for 2020 campaign, in which the organization seeks to set 20,000 girls on The Path to a technology career over the next two years.

“As leaders in preparing both women and men for rewarding tech careers, we at Drexel are thrilled to partner with TechGirlz in empowering and preparing young girls to be good students and eventually play a critical role in meeting society's technology needs,” said John Fry, Drexel's president.

As part of the partnership, TechGirlz and LeBow College will collaborate on initiatives designed to advance girls’ understanding of technology, such as workshops, research studies and summer camps. The first output from this collaboration was a TechGirlz TechShop focused on text mining and data analysis with LeBow College’s Business Analytics Solutions Center. This three-hour session taught local middle school girls how to use text mining software to represent data three dimensionally and analyze sentiment.

“Girls are eager to learn about the world around them and how they can impact it using technology,” said TechGirlz CEO and founder Tracey Welson-Rossman. “Drexel has been a wonderful partner to TechGirlz and this partnership will help our girls visualize and move forward on The Path from middle school on through college towards a career in technology. Together today, we can positively influence the number of women in technology tomorrow.” 

TechGirlz recently celebrated having reached 10,000 girls through its program. TechGirlz is unique for its custom built TechShopz that can be taught by volunteer instructors throughout the world. Each course is designed to match girls’ stated desires for compelling, challenging, and creative technology-related instruction. To reflect the demands of the modern tech-enabled workforce, subjects range far beyond coding to include courses on gaming, design, robotics, and more.

To accelerate its mission of inspiring girls and diversifying America’s technology workforce, TechGirlz has launched a $1 million capital campaign in support of its goal to reach 20,000 more middle school girls by 2020. To learn more about TechGirlz and its program, or to contribute to the 20K by 2020 campaign, visit http://www.techgirlz.org.