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Science whiz warms up mentors with cool tale of ‘Refrigerator Ladies’

If you ever get a chance to see the Arkansas Museum of Discovery’s Kevin Delaney in person, do.

Delaney, the museum’s visitor experience director who has gained national notoriety and upped his profile in Arkansas by appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, was a guest last week at a Million Women Mentors kickoff event in Bentonville. Those on hand got to see several experiments from Delaney. He dipped Cheetos in liquid nitrogen and ate them, and turned three oranges and a couple of bananas hooked up to a computer into an electric keyboard.

Perhaps the most inspiring thing Delaney did on stage, though, was tell the story of the “Refrigerator Ladies.”

Delaney explained how a team of six women was picked in 1946 to program the first computer. Known as the ENIAC — short for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer — the machine was mistakenly believed to have been programmed by men until about 1997.

More than 50 years went by before the women — once dismissed in photos of the computer as nothing more than eye candy, like women in refrigerator ads of the day — received their due.

“Women were the only people who knew how to use it,” Delaney told the crowd of 1,000, which included more than 500 students from across Northwest Arkansas. “Women’s contributions were seen as cute. They’re not cute. Women rule the world. Please don’t forget that.”

Delaney was among the presenters at the Million Women Mentors event, held at Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s David Glass Technology Center. Million Women Mentors was launched nationwide in 2014 to encourage girls and women to pursue careers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fields. Others on hand for the event included Wal-Mart’s Andrea Roberts, senior manager of STEM Strategy; Sharon Wibben, senior vice president of leverage human resources; and Cameron Geiger, senior vice president of ISD International; Arkansas Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin and Edie Fraser, CEO of STEMconnector and Million Women Mentors.

More than 532,134 mentors have pledged from 35 states. The state’s goal, set last week, is 5,000, which is more than neighboring Oklahoma at about 2,000, but not quite as high as Tennessee at 10,000.

Men and women can volunteer for the program, which asks for 20 hours a year.

“This is do-able,” Griffin told the participants, noting that Arkansas has produced a president (Bill Clinton), the world’s largest corporation (Wal-Mart) and music artists like Johnny Cash and Al Green. “This is easy. Let’s just get to work.”

The event last week was aimed at drumming up support among colleges, high schools, businesses and other nonprofits. Mentoring, organizers believe, can help raise the percentage of high school girls and undergraduate college women and women in the U.S. who pursue STEM careers.

Nearly 8.5 million STEM jobs are projected to be created by 2020. About 3 million of those jobs will go unfilled if more students, particularly women, don’t pursue STEM careers. Studies show a significant gap between the number of male and female STEM workers in America today. Women hold just 24 percent of STEM jobs.

Women in STEM jobs earn more than those in other professions and the wage gap between men and women in STEM occupations is 8 cents compared to 23 cents in other fields.

Mentors, organizers hope, will also help keep more women with degrees in science and engineering working in those fields. As it stands, nearly 1 in 5 women with degrees in those areas are out of the workforce, compared to 1 in 10 men.

According to a study of 100 female students with bachelor’s degrees, 12 graduated with a STEM major, but only three continue to work in STEM fields 10 years after graduation.

Mentoring also benefits the mentors, according to data collected by Million Women Mentors. Employees who took time to bring along students or younger workers were promoted six times more often. Those being mentored were promoted five times more than employees who didn’t have somebody helping guide them.

“Find your mentor and make your impact,” Delaney said.

If you have a tip, call Chris Bahn at (479) 365-2972 or email him at [email protected]

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