Holli Rosdail, a senior Electrical Engineering student at Cal Poly Pomona, has found very few female peers. Although being a part of the minority was often discouraging, she quickly learned the benefit of clubs and support groups as they keep her motivated to excel in the predominately male field. While the percentage of female engineering students is increasing – Holli is of the opinion that the
number of women in the rewarding STEM fields simply isn’t growing fast enough. This is especially true considering the fact that the numbers may not accurately reflect how many women become discouraged and switch their major or drop out in the first year or two of study. Holli believes this is at least in part facilitated by women not feeling the same community of support and encouragement that men in the same fields enjoy. With the desire to encourage fellow female classmates, Holli came up with the idea of facilitating a Cal Poly Pomona STEMinist movement by creating a "steminist" scholarship. She feels that if girls know other female students are rooting for them and eager to help, they may be encouraged to continue. To fund the scholarship, she sells "steminist" shirts to promote, encourage, and support women in STEM fields
