As Indianapolis prepares to celebrate Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour this weekend, Purdue University hopes to inspire girls and women to pursue a new era of their own — careers in science, technology, engineering and math.
This weekend, Purdue hopes to both elevate its developing presence in Indianapolis and expose Swift’s primarily female audience to STEM as hundreds of thousands of visitors pour into Indy for the concerts. The university, which has been trying to shrink the gender gap in such careers, will have a Taylor Swift-themed STEM recruiting event Nov. 2-3 near Circle Centre Mall.
“It seemed like a good opportunity for us to introduce all of these young women, and likely their parents, to Purdue and what a path at Purdue could look like for them,” said Katie Ellis, senior director of marketing strategy at Purdue Brand Studio.
If you go
In Our Stem Era
📍 Near the Georgia Street entrance of Circle Centre Mall in downtown Indianapolis. Check out Mirror Indy’s guide to parking downtown.
🗓️ 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Nov. 2 and noon to 5 p.m. Nov. 3
💲 Free and open to the public
In 2021, women made up just over a third of the STEM workforce nationwide, according to federal data. Though women go to college at far higher rates than men, women receive less than a quarter of bachelor’s degrees in engineering, computer science and physics, according to the National Girls Collaborative Project.
Purdue Indianapolis junior Grace Klein, 20, wants to see that gender gap shrink — and disappear — in her lifetime.
“A lot of younger girls maybe don’t even think about engineering as an option,” Klein said. “They see it as that male-dominated field. I don’t want them to see it that way.”
Taylor Swift and STEM
Purdue event organizers wanted to combine STEM with some of the interests of Taylor Swift’s young, female audience. That meant, for example, emphasizing the scientific roots of the cosmetics and beauty industries.
“Feminine interests, I feel like, have always been belittled in some ways,” Eliis said, “but I think that being able to show the serious professions and the serious women behind some of these fields has been really fun for us.”
Attendees will make binary code friendship bracelets while chatting about computer science. At an e.l.f Cosmetics station at the event, they can get their hair and makeup touched up while learning about the chemistry behind their favorite beauty products.
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They’ll also be able to design their own photo backdrops and participate in a space-themed experiment led by Purdue students from the Women in Engineering program. And for the motorsports enthusiasts, e.l.f. Cosmetics will display the car the company sponsored in the 2024 Indy 500. The Honda was driven by Katherine Legge in this year’s race, one of just nine women to ever compete in the Indy 500.
Klein, who’s studying biomedical engineering, will volunteer at the expo this weekend along with female STEM students at Purdue.
As she talks to girls and women at the event, Klein hopes she can empower them to explore the sheer variety of career options within STEM.
“You don’t have to do engineering. There’s so many other fields that you can go into with STEM if you like math and science,” she said. “Seeing it as, ‘This isn’t the decision that is going to dictate the rest of my future. I have so many different paths that I can go down with this.’”
Claire Rafford covers higher education for Mirror Indy in partnership with Open Campus. Contact Claire at claire.rafford@mirrorindy.org or on Instagram/X @clairerafford.
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