IIT Delhi launches STEM mentorship programme for Class 11 girl students

NEW DELHI: With an aim to encourage girls towards choosing science as their career, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi has launched a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) mentorship programme for schoolgirls.

IIT Delhi’s STEM programme is designed for Class 11 girl students. Under this initiative, each schoolgirl will be mentored by an IIT Delhi faculty along with their research scholars.

IIT Delhi in a statement said that “there will be ten Class 11 girl students of science stream in one batch, and this is going to be a three-level programme”. In the first batch, the ten students are from different Kendriya Vidyalayas in the Delhi region. In the future, there are plans to have participation from students from other regions in the country and turn the programme into a residential one.

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"The primary objectives of the STEM mentorship programme are to train young students to think creatively about science and innovation, to provide them with novel hands-on experience in solving research problems, and to help them form a stronger knowledge foundation," IIT Delhi said.

IT Delhi's STEM mentorship programme: Highlights

• An online lecture series, consisting of modules in chemistry, physics, biology, mathematics and some engineering branches. These lectures will be delivered by IIT Delhi professors during the period between Feb and Apr 2022. During this period, the students will also be interacting constantly with their mentors on their specific projects.
• Summer project (3-4 Weeks in May-June 2022), where the students will get hands-on experience in labs, and finalize their project reports with their mentors.
• The project areas of the students will cover different disciplines of science and engineering such as computer science, chemistry, mechanical engineering, physics, and biological sciences.

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The STEM mentorship programme for schoolgirls is the second academic outreach initiative by IIT Delhi for school students. In September 2021, the Institute had launched SciTech Spins lecture series for students from Class 9 to 12.