Lewis College Associate Professor Carly Kocurek’s “Games for Girls: Informing the Future” video has made it into the top twelve of the National Science Foundation (NSF) STEM Diversity and Inclusion Video Exhibition Challenge. It is in round three of the People’s Choice Voting Round and needs your vote to catapult it into the winner’s circle.

Kocurek’s video is based on her two-year NSF research project which studies the achievements and shortcomings of the Games for Girls movement of the 1990s, which was designed to draw girls to video games and computing. Workforce diversity is a significant issue for innovation in the gaming industry. Kocurek says that insights from the Games for Girls movement can play a valuable role in informing efforts to bring more women to the computing and gaming industry.

“It’s a lot easier for girls to imagine themselves as computer scientists, engineers and game designers when they know about women working in those fields,” she says in the video. “If we can see ourselves in the history of our field it’s a lot easier to imagine ourselves as part of its future.”

Voting is open right now through August 24, 2020 and the two videos that collect the most likes will win the People’s Choice Round. Click on this link to view and vote for Kocurek’s video.

The NSF’s STEM Diversity and Inclusion Video Exhibition Challenge is among its initiatives to support innovative, effective, and replicable approaches to building a diverse and inclusive STEM workforce through partnerships. The NSF invited grantees from all NSF programs to showcase, in the form of a short video (1 to 3 minutes), how forging partnerships, networks, or alliances has contributed to an increase in diversity and inclusion in STEM.