Closing the STEM gap

STEM - this acronym stands for the disciplines of Mathematics, Computer Science, Science and Technology. Johannes Kretzschmar is convinced that STEM is exciting and cool. The head of the Jena Light Workshop wants to pass on this conviction. Together with his colleagues Canan Gallitschke and Dr Theresia Palenta, he focuses particularly on young women. They are still a minority in most STEM disciplines, and the team would like to offer new access to them at an early stage. The key to this lies in the Lichtwerkstatt Makerspace at the Abbe Centre of Photonics; an open creative space for tinkerers and inventors that first opened its doors to the public in 2017. Over the next three years, the project "Hands-on! The STEM Makerspace" will be implemented here. The ambitious goal is to attract 1,000 young women to take part in workshops and exciting STEM projects at the interface with research and to inspire them with a lasting enthusiasm for STEM. Through "aha experiences", the aim is to encourage more young women to make a conscious decision in favour of a STEM subject when choosing a course of study or career. The project aims to help close the STEM gap: There is currently a shortage of more than 150,000 people in STEM professions on the labour market nationwide. For this reason, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research is supporting the project with a total of 557,000 euros.

A veritable playground for creativity

"We want to offer tenders that are of interest to young women without always labelling them with Engineering or Physics," says Johannes Kretzschmar. The head of the light workshop is thinking, for example, of cosplay, the playful and at the same time technical transformation into comic or manga characters. There could be a workshop in which the participants add sound and light effects to their self-created costumes. Their control would be technically realised in the light workshop, a playful approach to technical and physical topics.

Johannes Kretzschmar says that creativity is given a lot of space in the light workshop. "Once our laser cutter is up and running, there are a lot of possibilities for creative minds." Whether it's labelling or complicated objects, the laser offers a playground for ideas, for trying things out on different materials. This trial and error should be the focus of the project. "Our makerspace is a big tinkerer's lab, where young tinkerers are just as welcome as a grandpa who wants to expand his model railway layout," says Kretzschmar. To get the project "Hands-on! The STEM Makerspace" project, schools, clubs, museums, institutes, companies and extracurricular learning centres have already been recruited as partners. The tenders are open to girls and boys, and young people with different backgrounds and educational biographies are also deliberately addressed. Not every participant will go on to study STEM subjects, but if curiosity about the broad field of natural sciences is awakened, the project can be considered a success.

Conveying enthusiasm for Physics with the help of role models

The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is funding the project "Hands-on! The STEM Makerspace" project as part of the "Increasing the proportion of women in the STEM research and innovation process: strengthening self-efficacy, initiative and creativity (Mission STEM: Women Shape the Future)" programme. In line with this objective, role models are to be deliberately provided for young creative talent: "For example, we want to attract female entrepreneurs, doctoral candidates and students to the workshops and courses," says Canan Gallitschke. Those who are fascinated by STEM themselves are best placed to pass this fascination on to younger people.