Conference Session

Women in Engineering Division Poster Session

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Angela R. Bielefeldt, University of Colorado, Boulder

Tagged Divisions

Women in Engineering

Paper ID #9573Does Engineering Attract or Repel Female Students Who Passionately Wantto Help People?Dr. Angela R Bielefeldt, University of Colorado, Boulder Angela Bielefeldt, Ph.D., P.E., is a Professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, & Architec- tural Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. She has been on the faculty since 1996. She serves as the ABET Assessment Coordinator for the Department. Professor Bielefeldt teaches introduc- tory courses for first year engineering students, senior capstone design, and environmental engineering specialty courses. She conducts engineering education

Conference Session

WIED: Medley

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Joanna Wolfe, Carnegie Mellon University; Beth A. Powell, Tennessee Tech University

Tagged Divisions

Women in Engineering

teamsAbstractWomen in masculine fields such as engineering often face a paradox when it comes tointerpersonal communication: if they speak like a woman they may be perceived as weak oremotional, but if they speak and act like a man they may be perceived as difficult to work with.This project attempts to uncover the tacit knowledge that successful engineering women haveaccumulated about communicating successfully as an engineer so that we can pass thisknowledge down to students. Discourse completion interviews with 23 female engineeringprofessionals and 19 female undergraduates asked participants to identify how they wouldrespond to situations where a teammate is dominating a project. We find that while students tendto either avoid conflict or correct