The MyBEST (Mentoring Youth Building Employable Skills in Technology) project, funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation's Informal Science Education program, concluded its three years of operation in 2006. This youth-based program was intended to provide participants with in-depth learning experiences involving information and design technologies. These experiences had a dual focus: enabling youth participants to gain fluency in using these technologies while showing them how adults apply them in work and academic endeavors. Appendix includes survey.
This report is the result of a project to investigate through a sociocultural lens whether girls-only, informal STEM experiences have potential long-term influences on young women's lives, both in terms of STEM but also more generally. The authors documented young women's perceptions of their program experiences and the ways in which they influenced their future choices in education, careers, leisure pursuits, and ways of thinking about what science is and who does it. This report includes the questionnaire used in the study.