Jamestown AAUW Chapter Champions STEM Education, Equity for Local Girls

Kelly Krein has been a member of the Jamestown affiliate of the American Association of University Women since 1968. More than five decades later, she volunteers at the chapter's used bookstore, helps coordinate local events, and measures the distance still to travel. "We never reached the goal of equity for women and girls," she said. "We are still working on that."

That candor captures both the durability and the urgency behind what the Jamestown AAUW chapter does in Stutsman County. The chapter is one of hundreds of AAUW affiliates operating across the country, each tasked with translating the national organization's mission of advancing equity for women and girls through advocacy, education, philanthropy, and research into concrete local action. In Jamestown, that translation looks like a used bookstore on 18th Street, a packed gymnasium of middle schoolers building robots, scholarship checks to local students, and decades of sustained lobbying on issues that shaped public life in North Dakota.

From National Mission to Jamestown Classrooms

AAUW has operated nationally since 1881, but Erin Klein, chair of the Jamestown chapter's steering committee, describes the local affiliate as an active and highly visible presence in the community, not simply a dues-paying outpost of a national brand. The chapter's programming spans education, public policy, and community service, and its work is designed to complement, not duplicate, what Jamestown Public Schools and area educators are already doing to expand opportunity for girls.

Previously, AAUW Jamestown lobbied for causes as foundational as public kindergarten and public television in North Dakota. Those campaigns are now history, but the chapter's willingness to engage on policy questions has not faded. Klein sees the chapter's distinctiveness clearly: "There are other women's organizations in the community. Some of them overlap with what we advocate, but we have a unique way to raise money with the bookstore and have a strong focus on our causes."

TechSavvy and STEMtastic: A Pipeline Built One Workshop at a Time

The chapter's signature contribution to Stutsman County's educational landscape is its role as lead sponsor of the annual TechSavvy and STEMtastic event, a daylong STEM conference held on the University of Jamestown campus at the Reiland Fine Arts Center. The event draws more than 270 middle school students from eight schools across the county and region for 32 hands-on, interactive workshops designed to connect girls with careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

The program did not begin as a tradition. It began as a response to a problem. "It started out of a STEM study to determine why so few girls pursued those fields," said Joan Enderle, a member of the AAUW Jamestown Steering Committee. In 2015, the chapter received one of only 15 grants awarded nationally to launch the program, a recognition that placed Jamestown alongside a small cohort of communities chosen to model what girl-centered STEM outreach could accomplish.

At each event, students rotate through workshops led by working STEM professionals, including sessions on robotics and coding. North Dakota's Gateway to Science contributes a "STEM Zone" featuring 10 stations where students interact with a range of career pathways. The organizational footprint behind the event is broad: co-sponsors include the University of Jamestown, Jamestown School District 1, and North Dakota's Gateway to Science, with grant support from the North Dakota STEM Ecosystem and additional backing from local organizations including Collins Aerospace, Interstate Engineering, the Knights of Columbus, and Kiwanis. AAUW Jamestown covers costs not addressed by grant funding, including meals for presenters and volunteers.

The workforce implications are direct. Engineering and computer science remain among the most heavily male-dominated STEM fields in the country, and events like TechSavvy and STEMtastic are explicitly designed to shift those odds by giving girls firsthand exposure to professionals and practical skills before high school course selection locks in their trajectories.

The Second Chapter Bookstore: Advocacy on a Shelf

A quieter but essential piece of the chapter's operation runs out of 810 18th St. SW: the Second Chapter AAUW Bookstore, a used book resale shop whose proceeds fund the chapter's community programs. The store recently received about 800 donated books in a single week, an indicator of both community goodwill and the sustained volume needed to keep the chapter's programming financially viable.

Kelly Krein frames the bookstore's purpose without ambiguity: the sale of books funds advocacy for women and girls in the community. For a chapter that operates without the corporate sponsorships or foundation endowments available to larger nonprofits, the bookstore gives AAUW Jamestown an independent revenue stream that preserves its ability to advocate and act on its own terms.

Scholarships, Library Talks, and Community Partnerships

Beyond STEM programming, the Jamestown chapter awards scholarships to local students and engages in book-donation activities that extend its educational mission into homes and libraries. The chapter holds community gatherings and library talks, and its members contribute volunteer hours to area nonprofits, weaving the organization into the broader civic fabric of Stutsman County.

Recent chapter activities have included a book discussion of "Land in Her Own Name," a text exploring women's homesteading in North Dakota, held at the 1883 Stutsman County Courthouse. That combination of historical reflection and active civic engagement is characteristic of how the chapter connects its identity to the region's past while pressing forward on contemporary equity goals.

Membership is open to anyone who supports the mission. National dues run $76 per year; local dues are $5. Volunteer opportunities at TechSavvy and STEMtastic range from a few hours checking in students to a full day assisting STEM professionals during workshops.

A Long Game With Local Stakes

For Stutsman County families, the chapter's events offer daughters a chance to spend a day in a room where women working in science, engineering, and technology are not the exception but the norm. For educators and school administrators, AAUW Jamestown represents a proven partner for outreach that reaches into middle schools at precisely the moment when interest in technical fields tends to diverge along gender lines.

The chapter has operated through periods of national progress on gender equity and through periods of regression. Kelly Krein's five-plus decades of membership, and her clear-eyed acknowledgment that the work remains unfinished, is its own kind of institutional record: the Jamestown affiliate is not a chapter that waits for the national mood to shift. It runs workshops, it staffs a bookstore, it writes scholarship checks, and it keeps counting.