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Encouragement increases self-efficacy, which is the belief in one’s ability to successfully perform a task. Because we are more likely to engage in tasks that we believe we can perform successfully, encouragement may be especially useful for attracting women to male-stereotyped fields such as computing. The case study written by Gloria Townsend describes the impact she and her colleagues have had by making encouraging comments to women in their courses.

Need help evaluating your mentoring program? This resource provides a step-by-step plan with example metrics for evaluating a workplace mentoring program (in either industry or academia). Recommendations are based on best practices in professional program evaluation. This guide can be used as a companion resource to NCWIT's Mentoring-in-a-Box: Technical Women at Work available at www.ncwit.org/imentor and NCWIT's Mentoring-in-a-Box: Women Faculty in Computing at www.ncwit.org/facultymentor.

Technical women face challenges, from institutionalized bias to differences in communication styles to a lack of female role models. Developed in collaboration with the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, Mentoring-in-a-Box: Technical Women at Workhelps women excel in the technical professions and advance to positions of leadership.

Students most likely to complete their graduate studies are those who are viewed as junior colleagues in a positive relationship with their advisors and who are well integrated into their department’s or lab’s intellectual community. Where one woman graduate student finds support and guidance from her advisor, another is stifled by her advisor’s inconsistent and inappropriate behavior. Systems of accountability, together with trained and caring advisors, increase the chances that doctoral students will successfully navigate the path to research careers.

Paired mentors and protégés exchange advice for career advancement and reduced turnover. Formal mentoring programs may include organized activities that provide a framework for the mentor-protégé relationship and can lead to more rapid career advancement and higher career satisfaction for participants than non-participants. New hires and established employees at Sun Engineering are paired with executives and senior Engineering staff in a well-organized program.

Undergraduates with positive research experiences feel more confident and motivated to enter graduate programs. To facilitate successful REUs, supportive faculty advisors or graduate mentors should clearly communicate goals to students and allow them to spend a large amount of time on research, increasing independence as the project progresses. The Affinity Research Group model (ARG) integrates student participation in research teams and a structured cooperative learning environment.