History
From 2005 to 2007, the then existing pilot project was funded by the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Food and Rural Affairs. When the program went online in 2005 after a preparatory phase, it exceeded its original goals: Instead of the planned 200 mentoring couples, a total of 355 couples participated in the program during its first two years. In 2006, the University of Ulm acknowledged the development of CyberMentor with the Women's Advancement Award. Despite these successes, no funding was approved for the third year. In 2008, CyberMentor was therefore continued on a volunteer basis and was able to accommodate 256 mentoring pairs in the third round.
Nationwide funding and scaling of the program
The second funding phase of the program began at the end of 2008 with nationwide support. CyberMentor was included in the National Pact for Women in STEM Professions and funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the European Social Fund. The CyberMentor team grew and, with the appointment of Prof. Dr. Heidrun Stöger to the University of Regensburg, also organized the program from that location. With BMBF funding, in addition to nationwide expansion, extensive accompanying research was introduced, and the number of participants was set at 800 female students and 800 female mentors per round. In 2011, the Ulm team relocated to the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, as Prof. Dr. Dr. Albert Ziegler assumed the Chair of Educational Psychology there. To promote the institutionalization of the program and secure funding from industry, the CyberMentor Advisory Board was established in the same year. Due to the proven success of CyberMentor (see section "Research at CyberMentor"), a second round of funding was granted by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) starting in 2012, with the stipulation that the program be made permanent. At the same time, major companies such as Siemens AG, Daimler AG, IBM Germany, SAP AG, Krones AG, and Maschinenfabrik Reinhausen GmbH began to commit to sponsoring CyberMentor. Like the pilot phase, the first BMBF funding phase was also very successful: a total of 3,428 mentoring pairs participated over the six years.
Introduction of the community concept and extensive funding
Initial evaluation results showed that active participants with a strong network on the online platform benefited more from CyberMentor. Taking account of these results, the community concept was introduced for the 2012 round. A community is composed of two mentoring pairs (two mentors and two students) who share the same STEM interests and can work on projects together. To support the activities within the communities, the CyberMentor year was divided into four mentoring phases and a selection of STEM projects was created. STEM wikis, which all participants can access and edit independently, were set up to document the project work.
Since 2014, CyberMentor has been funded entirely by ministries, foundations, and sponsorships and donations. At this time an important step for CyberMentor was also a comprehensive redesign of the online platform and website.
Several other sponsors, such as the employers' association Gesamtmetall, the Fraunhofer Society for the Advancement of Applied Research, and ZF Friedrichshafen AG, supported the project for a long time. We would particularly like to highlight Mercedes-Benz Mobility AG, which continues to co-finance our work.
Overall, the CyberMentor program has so far enabled nearly 12,000 mentoring pairs to share their STEM interests and jointly develop perspectives for the mentees' future in STEM fields. At the same time, the CyberMentor team is continuously working to enable a large number of girls to participate in the future.
