In fact, it was a challenge that drew her into the field of science, engineering, technology and mathematics — often shortened to STEM.
All subjects from science and mathematics to English and social studies were a cakewalk for young Miller. "Without knowing where the hoop was, I could jump through it," she said.
Her first true challenge came in applying what she learned as a middle school student in a technology and engineering course. She had to add the right amount of weight to a car so it would stop at a designated point; her car hit the wall. Miller received an F on the assignment.
That F wasn't a bookend to STEM for her. No, from that day on, she was hooked.
Perhaps that love of a challenge — rather than an aversion to difficult tasks — has helped Miller not only pursue but excel at a career as a woman in a male-dominated STEM field. And in April, Miller rose to the prominence of serving as president to the International Technology and Engineering Educators Association, where she leads 1,500 members across the world.
"I'm not gonna sugar coat it," Miller said. "It is not easy. I feel like I have developed a really thick skin toward how I might be treated or what might be said and the ability to kind of respond in a way that is not rude, not attacking but also shows I'm gonna earn my space here."
More than one million American women work in STEM occupations but only represent 26 percent of the STEM workforce as of 2023, according to STEM Women, an international organization hosting networking and career events for STEM students and recent graduates. In 2016, fewer than one million American women worked in STEM occupations, making up 21 percent of the workforce.
At the current, gradual rate for growth of women in STEM, there won't be equal representation until 2070.
Miller said for a while there might be progress, but it won't be very visible until there is a larger number of women in STEM fields.
"For a while we're still going to be getting girls into these classes or in those fields or in those prep programs and then they're noticing 'I'm here but I'm still up against these prejudices,'" Miller said. "I'm still up against these biases of what a girl can do and I'm not comfortable here. The progress is good, showing any growth is good, but it's just not something that's going to be an overnight fix."
Keys to change, said Miller and other experts, likely lie in highlighting women's successes and providing active mentoring.
BUILDING COMMUNITY
While increasing the number of women in STEM won't happen overnight, initiatives exist all over the county and across the world to drive female participation in the STEM fields.
Twins Tierney and Brighid Staman credit Lancaster city-based North Museum's STEM Sisters program with solidifying their interest in both pursuing biology as a major. STEM Sisters' events provide hands-on activities and an opportunity for girls in grades six through 12 to explore career options, college prospects and vocational education across a multitude of STEM fields.
After graduating from the first class of STEM Sisters in 2012, the twins continue to advance in their field with one interning at the Chesapeake Bay Trust Climate and Conservation Corps in Frederick, Maryland, and the other recently completing an internship with NASA's research center in Sunnyvale, California.
Both girls praised the program for giving them a community of young women interested in the STEM fields.
STEM Sisters gave Tierney Staman "access to resources I probably wouldn't have had otherwise," she said in an interview with the North Museum.
"It will show (other girls in STEM) what else is out there and it will give them perspective on anything that they can do," Tierney Staman said of the program. "It will connect them with people who have aspirations toward that field."
After studying in often male-dominated classes in high school and as a dual civil engineering and architectural studies major at Elizabethtown College, Paige Parsons was relieved to be a part of the first all-female cohort in the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission's Engineer Trainee Program.
"Going through this trainee program, having three other girls and immediately we were all stuck in a car together — we became pretty close pretty quickly," Parsons said.
Forming bonds hadn't always been that easy for Parsons. In her first semester of college, she was one of only two girls in her class. Attending Southern Huntingdon High School in Huntingdon County — an area she described as the "middle of nowhere" — didn't prepare her too much for talking to men at Elizabethtown College mainly from suburbs or the city, she said.
"The main issue I had at the beginning was just figuring out how to talk to people... and find a way to communicate with them, because if I ran into a problem, I would always reach out to other people in the class first," Parsons said. But, after tackling that challenge "it helped a lot through the rest of my college career."
Upon completion of the program, Parsons and her cohort continued working at the Turnpike Commission full-time.
'BUILDING MY OWN BRIDGE'
Even with initiatives and groups aimed at increasing young girls' involvement in STEM, teen girls' interest in non-medical STEM careers has remained stagnant for years.
Only 10 percent of roughly 1,000 13- to 17-year-olds surveyed nationally in 2023 said they'd want a job in a non-medical STEM profession after they graduate, which is down 1 percent from 11 percent of a similar sample size surveyed in 2018, according to Junior Achievement USA — a nonprofit focused on youth career preparation.
Challenges to retaining and recruiting female interest in STEM fields may lie in the approach, says ITEEA President Miller.
For example, Miller said simply painting a hammer pink won't necessarily draw girls to a career in construction. It's a superficial fix. Instead, she said those already in the field need to figure out why a gap exists in the first place.
"It's not changing STEM so that girls are more interested, it's showing girls what's already there but we haven't been talking about it because historically it's been mostly guys doing the work so we've been talking about mostly what guys are interested in within STEM fields," Miller said.
To increase female participation in STEM, Miller said leaders and educators must understand what drives and deters interest.
Early in a girl's schooling, Miller said, she might fall off the path to a STEM career in one of two places: in elementary school, when developing a self-perception of what one can or can't do and in middle school when societal expectations of gender roles are learned.
At these points a girl may convince herself she's performing poorly or label an interest as a "boy activity," and turn to other subject matters, Miller said.
Those are points when, again, community becomes important, in the form of interest groups and mentors, she said.
Lancaster County STEM Alliance Executive Director Lauren Miller has had a hand in all levels of supporting young girls' interest in STEM from teaching to working with the Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13 introducing STEM projects into K-12 classrooms and now leading conversations on women's representation STEM.
Lauren Miller said, in her experience, mentorship and seeing women succeeding in STEM fields has an influence on diversifying the STEM workforce. For instance, she said the 2016 historical drama movie "Hidden Figures" about three Black women who were the brains behind the launch of the first American astronaut into space opened girls' eyes to what's possible.
"We need more people who are willing to step up and mentor and willing to encourage the next generation and share their experiences and talk about the challenges, the ways they've overcome them," Lauren Miller said. "I just can't understate the importance of mentors that represent the people they're supporting."
Women, she said, not only bring unique perspectives to the workforce but can fill the demand created by a growing number of STEM careers.
"To continue to innovate and be leaders in STEM, we need all people for our community to be able to fill those positions," Lauren Miller said.
For employers, filling those positions with women also means ensuring there's a supporting and welcoming culture for women — like her, like Penn Manor teacher Molly Miller, the Stamans and Parsons — so they stay and mentor others coming up in the career.
"It's cyclical," Lauren Miller said. "We need more females in the career to then mentor the next generation that will do it, but we need them to feel comfortable and welcomed and that they belong in that job to make them stay. That's part of the problem, too, is just having this culture where they feel like they belong, once they're in a STEM career."
©2025 LNP (Lancaster, Pa.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
