Culture and Attitude: A scholarship, mentoring and professional development program to increase the number of women graduating with engineering degrees.

Paula Holmes Jensen; Michael West; Jon J Kellar; Stuart D. Kellogg; Jennifer Karlin; Cassandra M Birrenkott

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Conference: 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Columbus, Ohio
Publication Date: June 24, 2017
Start Date: June 24, 2017
End Date: June 28, 2017
Conference Session: Action on Diversity - Supporting Students at Multiple Levels
Tagged Topics: Diversity and ASEE Diversity Committee
Page Count: 16
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--28094
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/28094
Download Count: 416

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Paper Authors

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Paula Holmes Jensen South Dakota School of Mines and Technology

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Paula Jensen is an Industrial Engineering Lecturer and the Mentor/Director of Culture and Attitude at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. She also is a small business owner and was in Manufacturing and Logistics for 9 years.

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Michael West South Dakota School of Mines and Technology

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Dr. Michael West is an associate professor and head of the department of materials and metallurgical engineering at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SD Mines). Between 2008-2013, he served as site director of the NSF I/UCRC Center for Friction Stir Processing (CFSP). Since then, he has been involved in a range of projects involving friction stir joining and alloy processing in a variety of metal alloys including aluminum alloys, ODS steels, titanium alloys, cast irons, and dissimilar metal alloys. He is also actively engaged in STEM-Ed projects and serves as the director for the NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) “Back to the Future”, coordinator for the Army Educational Outreach REAP program for High school students at SD Mines, and PI for the S-STEM Culture and Attitude program starting in 2016. Dr. West is active in several professional societies including ASM (directing the ASM Materials Camp for high school students), The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society, and the American Welding Society (serving as faculty advisor for the Black Hills American Welding Society chapter on the SD Mines campus).

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Jon J Kellar South Dakota School of Mines and Technology

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Kellar is the Douglas Fuerstenau Professor of Materials and Metallurgical Engineering at the SD School of Mines and Technology. He has been on the faculty since 1990, and in 1994 was selected as an National Science Foundation Presidential Faculty Fellow and in 2016 a Distinguished Member of the Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration.

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Stuart D. Kellogg South Dakota School of Mines and Technology

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Stuart Kellogg is Professor and Head of Industrial Engineering at SDSMT. His discipline research areas of interest include applied probability and stochastic models but his passion over the last two decades rests with STEM Education and STEM Education research. He has over 30 publications in first year engineering programs, broadening opportunities for intellectual diversity, project based learning, technology enabled support models, and assessment methods. He has participated in the NSF Rigorous Research in Engineering Educations and REES symposiums and has directed assessment of a variety of campus and multi-institutional programs.

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Jennifer Karlin University of Southern Maine

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Jennifer Karlin spent the first half of her career at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, where she was a professor of industrial engineering and held the Pietz professorship for entrepreneurship and economic development. She is now at the University of Southern Maine where she is a research professor of engineering and the curriculum specialist for the Maine Regulatory Training and Ethics Center.

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Cassandra M Birrenkott South Dakota School of Mines and Technology orcid.org/0000-0001-6137-0820

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Dr. Cassandra Degen received her B.S. degree in Metallurgical Engineering from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology in 2007. She received her Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering in 2012 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, studying mechanochemical reactions of a spiropyran mechanophore in polymeric materials under shear loading. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Engineering department at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology where her research interests include novel manufacturing and characterization techniques of polymer and composite structures and the incorporation of multifunctionality by inducing desired responses to mechanical loading.

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Abstract

Industry, media, and academia desire a more diverse engineering workforce. In response to those needs, faculty at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SD Mines) established the Culture and Attitude (C&A) program in fall 2010 with the support of a National Science Foundation S-STEM award. The program provides scholarships for academically bright and financially needy women, and also recognizes the need to change the fundamental paradigm (culture) for recruiting, and retaining students, particularly women, in engineering. To that end, the C&A program created a strong mentoring program, one that advocated a transformational approach to serving women in engineering. The program began as a collaboration between Metallurgical and Industrial Engineering programs and expanded to the Mechanical Engineering program in year 3. Students were required to meet with a mentor and their advisor at varied frequency throughout the semester based on their academic standing and class. They were also required to attend professional development activities, professional society meetings, and social activities with the entire C&A group once a month. The professional development and social activities included both technical (laboratory) and social (teamwork) confidence building exercises.

Program analysis was performed using traditional metrics (retention, the percentage of female enrolled and graduated) along with focus groups, longitudinal tracking, and examining student typology through Hermann Brain Dominance Inventory (HBDI). Students in the program were compared to the population that graduated from other engineering programs on campus. The retention, enrollment, and graduation rates of women increased in the initial five year period. Particularly noteworthy were the typology data, and focus group reactions to the program. HBDI results show that women at SD Mines think differently than their male counterparts, and majors with a greater percentage of women graduates received more than just the typical analytical engineering typology. C&A participants who received the scholarship in all three majors were more diverse in their typological preference. In other words, the participants were more entrepreneurial, highly detailed, empathetic engineers, a goal of the Engineer of 2020. Results from the focus groups showed that the professional activities were valued, but social activities were valued more. These findings became clearer in the focus group sessions where students indicated that the social activities allowed time for scholars to make social connections across academic disciplines. While much has been learned through approaching gender and intellectual diversity, much work remains before sustainable progress is made. Plans are now being developed to strengthen the program by incorporating service learning components as well as curricular changes for a broader institutionalization of the C&A program on campus.

Citation
Format

Jensen, P. H., & West, M., & Kellar, J. J., & Kellogg, S. D., & Karlin, J., & Birrenkott, C. M. (2017, June), Culture and Attitude: A scholarship, mentoring and professional development program to increase the number of women graduating with engineering degrees. Paper presented at 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Columbus, Ohio. 10.18260/1-2--28094

TY - CPAPER
AB - Industry, media, and academia desire a more diverse engineering workforce. In response to those needs, faculty at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SD Mines) established the Culture and Attitude (C&amp;A) program in fall 2010 with the support of a National Science Foundation S-STEM award. The program provides scholarships for academically bright and financially needy women, and also recognizes the need to change the fundamental paradigm (culture) for recruiting, and retaining students, particularly women, in engineering. To that end, the C&amp;A program created a strong mentoring program, one that advocated a transformational approach to serving women in engineering. The program began as a collaboration between Metallurgical and Industrial Engineering programs and expanded to the Mechanical Engineering program in year 3. Students were required to meet with a mentor and their advisor at varied frequency throughout the semester based on their academic standing and class. They were also required to attend professional development activities, professional society meetings, and social activities with the entire C&amp;A group once a month. The professional development and social activities included both technical (laboratory) and social (teamwork) confidence building exercises.

Program analysis was performed using traditional metrics (retention, the percentage of female enrolled and graduated) along with focus groups, longitudinal tracking, and examining student typology through Hermann Brain Dominance Inventory (HBDI). Students in the program were compared to the population that graduated from other engineering programs on campus. The retention, enrollment, and graduation rates of women increased in the initial five year period. Particularly noteworthy were the typology data, and focus group reactions to the program. HBDI results show that women at SD Mines think differently than their male counterparts, and majors with a greater percentage of women graduates received more than just the typical analytical engineering typology. C&amp;A participants who received the scholarship in all three majors were more diverse in their typological preference. In other words, the participants were more entrepreneurial, highly detailed, empathetic engineers, a goal of the Engineer of 2020. Results from the focus groups showed that the professional activities were valued, but social activities were valued more. These findings became clearer in the focus group sessions where students indicated that the social activities allowed time for scholars to make social connections across academic disciplines. While much has been learned through approaching gender and intellectual diversity, much work remains before sustainable progress is made. Plans are now being developed to strengthen the program by incorporating service learning components as well as curricular changes for a broader institutionalization of the C&amp;A program on campus.

AU - Paula Holmes Jensen
AU - Michael West
AU - Jon J Kellar
AU - Stuart D. Kellogg
AU - Jennifer Karlin
AU - Cassandra M Birrenkott
CY - Columbus, Ohio
DA - 2017/06/24
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Culture and Attitude: A scholarship, mentoring and professional development program to increase the number of women graduating with engineering degrees.
UR - https://peer.asee.org/28094
DO - 10.18260/1-2--28094
ER -