Sequestration Cuts Shipyard's STEM Outreach

U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-NH, said she was very impressed after she met with members of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard's Women's Resource Network on Thursday morning and she firmly supports the shipyard's efforts to get more young women interested in STEM, which stands for science, technology, engineering and math.

But Shaheen also learned that sequestration has cut funding to the shipyard's outreach program supported by NAVSEA that is designed to get female middle school students interested in pursuing careers in those disciplines.

At Gate 1 on Thursday morning, Shaheen commended the efforts of shipyard workers who travel to schools in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts to meet with students and for running outreach programs at the shipyard. At a time when the country needs to get more young people, especially women, interested in pursuing careers that utilize STEM, Shaheen said the country needs more programs like the ones at the shipyard.

"It's a win-win for everybody if we can get more women involved," she said.

Currently, Shaheen said there are 519 women who work at the shipyard out of the total workforce of about 6,000 employees and very few of them work as engineers, chemists, or nuclear technicians.

Debbie Jennings, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, Local 4, at the shipyard, said sequestration has forced the Navy to completely cut the funding that allowed shipyard workers to do the outreach programs. Now if they want to travel to places like the University of Maine in Orono, Exeter High School or middle schools in Massachusetts to get the next generation of potential shipyard workers excited about pursuing STEM careers, they have to volunteer their time or use vacation time, she said.

Jennings said the outreach programs are important to the shipyard because as older engineers, chemists and technicians retire, they need to know there will be more young people in the pipeline who will be interested in pursuing those careers.

"It's really important to get to them at the middle school level," said Jennings, whose union represents about 1,600 shipyard workers.