Page 24.675.2undergraduate engineering experience. Many prior studies that have considered these issues in 1 different ways and in different contexts served as critical foundations to the current study and aredescribed in the following paragraphs in terms of their relationship to the current study.Over two decades ago, Astin published the seminal work, Involvement: The Cornerstone ofExcellence, which indicated the critical link between student involvement, engagement andsuccess in undergraduate studies 1. Astin defined involvement in terms of physical andpsychological energy devoted to a specific context, and went on to outline a series of
teammates’ behaviors, professional engineers used structured,semi-formal procedures and appealed to team and individual goals to drive the conversationforward. They focused on presenting solutions, rather than dwelling on problems, and avoidedmentioning feelings or needs to prevent appearing emotional. We also found that professionalwomen strategically used flattery to accomplish their ends and rehearsed difficult conversations.Such strategies need to be shared with engineering undergraduates to help them develop anddraw upon range of successful interpersonal strategies for handling difficult situations.1. Introduction I think we all start out—we want to communicate in the style that's comfortable for us and what comes natural…I think
situations that could be construed as SHthrough the provision of a range of “What if…” scenarios. More importantly, it providedstrategies to help female engineering students cope with SH through learning from theexperiences of professional panelists with expertise in this area. On a scale of 1 (poor) to 5(excellent), the overall impression of the workshop according to participants who took theevaluation survey was 4.74. Moreover, 100% of the survey participants felt that the workshopmet their expectations. Furthermore, questions pertaining to perceived informational needsrelative to SH were included in a survey administered to all graduating engineering students of amid-Atlantic university. Almost half of survey respondents indicated that SH was an
wholein the U.S.1 In particular, implementing summer camps that attract high school students for allengineering disciplines has been proven to be a very effective approach to partially addressingthe shortage of engineers.25In addition to combating the decline in the number of U.S. engineers, outreach programs seek notonly to increase engineering enrollment but also to diversify the field of engineering.1 Dave et al.confirm by stating that one way of addressing the lack of engineers is to solve the problem ofunderrepresentation of women.10 Outreach programs have been created and developed tospecifically target women to address this issue. 10 According to Cano, Berliner-Heyman, Koppel,Gibbons, & Kimmel, summer programs have been implemented
Literature: Like most initiatives to address the underrepresentation of women and minorities in STEM, the advocacy tips are drawn from a rich body of literature and evidence-‐based experiences. In a recent essay, Acker [1] reflects on 30 years of theorizing and researching gendered substructures enacted in organizations and, while recognizing that recent research provides clearer understandings of why women enter and/or remain in academia, also acknowledges that “a number of issues about how to think about gender inequalities remain unresolved” (pg. 214). Acker further notes that white men generally dominate top organizational positions and that
, psychological, andcognitive reasons for choices, particularly in academic settings. Simply put, the model suggeststhat academic motivation is influenced by perceived competence beliefs (“Can I do this task?”)and beliefs about the worth of the task (“is this task useful/interesting/etc?”). The model predictsthat student motivation for engineering is influenced by both students’ expectancy for successand their values. Figure 1 illustrates the general framework (A) as well as this study’sinterpretation of the EVT applied to student motivation for engineering (B). Figure 1. Expectancy-Value Theory of Achievement Motivation: general framework (A) and applied to this particular project context (B). Modified from Finelli and Daly (2012)11.Research by the
disadvantages that women and minorities face in society, and specifically in thefields of science and engineering, may be largely imperceptible to those more privilegedmembers of well-represented groups [1], it is evident there remain significant disadvantages forthese underrepresented groups. In this paper, we focus on the status of underrepresented groupsin academia, though the impact of these disadvantages reaches far beyond. While there havebeen significant increases in the participation of women and minorities in science andengineering, degree attainment and careers in academia in the last 40 years [2, 3], it remains farfrom equitable among all groups. The 2011 Engineering by the Numbers report [4] in the ASEEProfiles of Engineering and
environment be focused on 1) reducing role conflicts imposed by multipleenvironments, 2) providing continuity of training efforts, 3) creating a positive andrewarding mentoring culture, 4) and incorporating and evaluating efforts to increase one’sresearch self-efficacy beliefs. Not only must one be interested in a career pathway and provided with the optimalconditions to pursue a career pathway, they must be supported in their work environments toachieve and maintain a satisfying work life. Lent and Brown13 initially proposed a model forwork satisfaction that extends their scholarship on Social Cognitive Career Theory11. In thisprocess model, the authors posit that work satisfaction is influenced by 1) one’s affectivetraits, 2) participation in goal
found that, irrespective of gender, students who had a 5% higher self-evaluation scorethan their team evaluation score actually received lower course grades than those who under-valued their contribution to their team. These results indicate that small, engineering-focusedinstitutions may provide a learning environment and underlying support system for women thatresult in greater self-efficacy; or they may indicate that this type of institution attracts womenstudents who already have a strong commitment to the study of engineering and the necessarytenacity to succeed in this field.IntroductionTeamwork in engineering education provides students with important experiences that arerepresentative of the modern engineering workplace.1, 2 While
between the experiences of women in undergraduate engineering programs and their malecounterparts.1-5 Many existing explanations of women’s under-representation in engineering andphysical sciences are based on differences in intrinsic values, psychological needs, preparation,work-related values, family obligations, and lack of “critical mass.”3,6-14 Without ruling out thepossible significance of these factors, this paper explores an alternative factor, one over whichthe engineering profession itself might have greater control: the culture of our classrooms. Inparticular, we introduce several frameworks from the psychology and gender studies literaturethat shed light on how classroom climate plays a role in student experience and, in turn, in
and grouptutoring sessions as well as personal, professional and academic mentoring. Four of our six casestudy institutions also offered “living and learning” communities that used an all-inclusiveapproach to support student retention. For this panel session, we also examined if engineering seniors’ plans to work in oroutside of an engineering profession differed by gender and race/ethnicity. The P2P surveycontains three measures for this analysis, tapping students’ expectations that after graduationthey will: 1) be a practicing engineer in industry, government, or non-profit organization; 2)work in engineering management or sales; and 3) work outside engineering. We found thatwomen students were less likely than men to plan to be a
quantitative and qualitative indicators of change and provides deeper insightinto the impact of interventions on the experiences of women faculty. This paper uses feedbackon the impact of ADVANCE program activities from focus groups of female engineeringprofessors and quantitative data from faculty surveys to explore perceptions of climate and work-life balance in the college of engineering.National Science Foundation's ADVANCE programWomen have made much progress in science and engineering over the past 30 years, but theyremain underrepresented in both degree attainment and academic careers in many STEMdisciplines.1-3 In 2007, women earned 47% of science and engineering doctoral degrees awardedto U.S. citizens and permanent residents, up from 33% in
Education Innovation Center, College of Engi- neering, The Ohio State University, 244 Hitchcock Hall, 2070 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH, 43210-1278; email: allam.1@osu.edu.Dr. John A Merrill, Ohio State University Dr. John Merrill is Director of the First-Year Engineering Program at Ohio State University and a part of the management team for the Engineering Education Innovation Center. He is advisor to Engineers for Community Service, the Student Instructional Leadership Team, and a co-ed Engineering High School Explorer Post.Wally Peters, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of South Carolina Wally Peters has been a Professor at the University of South Carolina since 1980. He has received both the Mungo
inworking places in Japan. However, among those corporations that answered the survey, theratio of female engineers was only 1.3%.Ratio of female students Page 22.860.2 The ratio of female students in engineering fields among the member institutions was11.6% in universities and 16.5% in colleges of technology. According to the 2010 BasicSchool Survey of MEXT (= Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science & Technology),the ratio of female students in educational institutions as a whole is 41.1%, an increase of0.4% from the previous year (Fig. 1). The number of female students has been increasingsteadily. However, the ratio of female
that changes are needed in theengineering classrooms, and the need to think about women as a diverse group. Femaleundergraduate engineering students are typically studied with little attention paid to theintersection of race/ethnicity and gender. Some researchers consider this dual minority status tobe a “double-bind 1” while other researchers look at how attributes of certain underrepresentedracial backgrounds offer advantages to female students in Science, Technology, Engineering andMathematics (STEM) fields 2. Despite continued calls for disaggregated data on race and gender,few datasets have detailed information on student experiences with sufficient representation ofunderrepresented minorities to facilitate statistical analysis 3.Using
AC 2011-1956: INSTITUTIONAL ETHNOGRAPHY AS A METHOD TOUNDERSTAND THE CAREER AND PARENTAL LEAVE EXPERIENCESOF STEM FACULTY MEMBERSMarisol Mercado Santiago, Purdue University Marisol Mercado Santiago is a doctoral student in the School of Engineering Education, Purdue Univer- sity, and a research assistant in the Research in Feminist Engineering (RIFE) group. She has a M. E. in Computer Engineering and a B. S. in Computer Science (with honors). Among her research interests are (1) culturally responsive education, (2) engineering studies, and (3) art and engineering education. Address: School of Engineering Education, Armstrong Hall, 701 W. Stadium Ave., West Lafayette, IN 47907. mercado@purdue.edu.Alice L. Pawley
Technology is a land grant institution with strength inscience and engineering. The university, with about 28,000 students and 1,750 faculty, has 8colleges, the second largest of which is the College of Engineering with a faculty of 225. IowaState’s faculty is 28.9% women in tenured or tenure eligible positions, but the College ofEngineering (COE) has only 10.1% women faculty.1 Additionally, the attrition rate for ISUwomen faculty in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) issignificantly higher for women as compared to men (especially in the first three years).2Although these numbers are less favorable than national averages, ISU has demonstrated a strongcommitment to increase the diversity of the faculty and has invested
Committee. Page 22.1456.1 c American Society for Engineering Education, 2011 Myths of Race and Gender: The Engineering “Pipeline” Metaphor and the Careers of Female Deans of EngineeringIntroductionWho does engineering is important, since engineers are key contributors to the design oftechnologies that shape our world.1 While women have made significant gains in their proportionof degrees earned and their representation in the professoriate in the past 30 years, they remainsignificantly underrepresented in engineering.2 In 2009, women earned just 17.8% of the 74,387bachelor’s degrees awarded in
attempts to correct minority underrepresentation in the engineering disciplines,educational researchers, cognitive psychologists, and scholars in related fields have since the1980s developed many studies centered on the notion of student self-efficacy. 1-6 These studiesseek to measure the degree to which under-represented minority or otherwise marginalizedstudents experience a sense of self-confidence or feeling that they are able to counter "barrierconditions." Those conditions might include discrimination or other challenging social andintellectual situations encountered in college. While such studies are certainly preferable to adenial of differences between minority and majority experiences, they intentionally or otherwisesupport the notion
makes a difference, but is there a difference in motivation? Some findings from the Academic Pathways StudyIntroduction Despite years of research and intervention, women continue to be underrepresented inengineering [1]. In 2008, women comprised 18.4% of all recipients of an engineering degree [2],continuing an historical trend spanning the last 30 years, during which women’s share ofengineering degrees has remained stable or even declined. One of the goals of the AcademicPathways Study (APS) of which the present analysis is a part, was to contribute to the ongoingdialogue about underrepresentation in engineering, on both explanatory and remedial topics. Thepresent study discusses some APS
andgoverning groups across the nation are beginning to scrutinize time to graduation rates ofbaccalaureate degrees.1 The US Department of Education recently increased the reporting ofuniversity graduation rates from six to eight years, due to the increasing length of time studentsare taking to complete a baccalaureate degree. The increase in time to complete a degree isattributed to factors, such as increased cost of attendance and student employment to help pay forcollege, which may cause part-time enrollment. 2, 3 A study by an NSF funded engineeringeducation center, indicates that the pool of engineering students remains those entering as firsttime students, since very few students migrate into engineering from other degree paths.4 Thereare many
engineering bachelor’s degrees increased from lessthan 1% to 13% over that time frame, with women earning 41 bachelor’s degrees in those twodisciplines combined in 1966 and obtaining 2,571 electrical and 2,107 mechanical degrees in2006. Because those two disciplines have historically made up over half of the engineeringdegrees and in 2006 comprised 36,026 (53%) of the total engineering bachelor’s degrees1, thisindicates a serious problem in recruiting, retaining, and advancing girls and women in thesefields. See Figure 1 for number of bachelor’s degrees earned by women and men in engineering,electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering for the years 1966 to 2006 (Note that no datawas available for 1999).Although women’s underrepresentation in
Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada.5 Clark, M. C., Revuelto, J., Kraft, D., & Beatty, P. (2003). Learning to work in teams. Journal of Student-CenteredLearning, 1(3), 171-178.6 Romkey, L. (2007). Attracting and retaining females in engineering programs: Using and STSE approach.Retrieved April 10, 2008 from http://www.asee.org/conferences/paper-view.cfm?id=55187 Heyman, G., Martyna, B., & Bhatia, S. (2002). Gender and achievement-related beliefs among engineeringstudents. Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, (8)1, 41-53.8 Bean, J. P. (2005). Nine themes of college student retention. In A. Seidman (Ed.), College student retention.Formula for student success (pp. 215-244). Westport, CT: American Council on Education
model isthat these short-term projects and programs do not include long-term dedicated staff to carry outstrategies; however, this heavier reliance on STEM faculty and administrators means that theprojects are less vulnerable to fluctuations in funding and that they encourage the full “buy in” Page 22.1555.3and support of those same faculty members and administrators.In its own project model, the Institute for Women in Trades, Technology and Science (IWITTS)has chosen to focus on this integrative and institutional approach for increasing the number ofwomen in STEM for several reasons: 1) out of a belief that focusing on strategies for
Despite nearly 20 years of recruitment and retention efforts focused on female students,women constituted only 19% of engineering students in 2007. A cross-case analysis of sixengineering schools based on rich qualitative data from faculty, student, and administratorinterviews, as well as observations and documents, provides a unique opportunity to identifytrends and unique practices used to address the recruitment and retention of women engineeringstudents. This paper focuses specifically on how these institutions implement K-12 outreach,admissions, summer/bridge, and first and second-year support programs. We find three themesthat support recruitment of female students: 1) historical commitment, institutional type, andgeographical location; 2
in our university?It should be noted that all of our degree programs in the university would have qualified forresearch of the reasons why secondary level school girls choose the highly male-dominatedengineering fields. However, with the interest in the most problematic cases, the research wasdirected to scrutinize the most male-dominated degree programs: computer science,automation and systems technology and electronics. The proportions of female students in theresearched degree programs are presented in the Table [1]. The reader should observe that theofficial numbers of students registered in the university are much higher than the number ofstudents that actually begin their studies
in the CREW2 survey withthose in the ATU survey. A full report of the CREW2 survey, which includes comparisonbetween the female and male responses, has been made elsewhere7.Comparisons of ATU and CREW2 respondent personal and employment profilesYear of graduation, age and further studyAlthough the sample numbers obviously differed (56 for ATU compared with1187 for CREW2)the distribution of graduation dates and ages was very similar, as illustrated in Figures 1 and 2.The age distribution of the ATU respondents showed that 71% were under 40 years of age andthe corresponding figure for female CREW2 respondents was 84.4%.A higher engineering-related qualification was held by 8.9% of ATU respondents, comparedwith 20.0% of female CREW2 respondents
videoto determine the contribution of each team member to the presentation content, breaking downthe presentation slides into a series of 6 categories representing an array of technical levels: 1. Title Slide or Final Slide Page 22.1449.5 2. Introduction or Summary or Recap 3. Background 4. Overview Description of Design Solution (What it looks like) or Alternative Designs or Conclusions or Recommendations 5. Detailed Description of Design Solution (What it does/How it works/Cost/Drawbacks and Refutation) 6. Technical Specifications (materials, properties) or Testing Results or
environment. We use Guinier,Torres and Strum’s “Miner’s Canary” theory that minority group behavior is an important tool asa leading indicator of change to help provide insight for faculty and administrators interested inunderstanding the ways in which admissions criteria, pedagogy, curriculum, and institutionalenvironments need to be changed to not only support the needs of the minority groups but makethe environment healthier for all2.Moore, Brown & Scarupa6 reported that indicators are often underutilized in “the broader socialpolicy arena” (p.1) despite their widespread acceptance in so many other fields. Yet theseindicators can provide valuable information to policy makers on the macro, meso, and microlevels6. Moore, Brown, and Scarupa6
.MethodologyTwo research questions investigated in this qualitative study are:1. Can a boundary metaphor aid in understanding engineering faculty members’ explicit or implicit descriptions of engineering or their discipline within engineering?2. How do faculty members’ descriptions interact with historically and socially influenced ideas about women’s and men’s work?Ten engineering faculty members were interviewed from a small Mexican private institution ofhigher learning committed to first-class teaching, public service, research and learning in a widerange of academic disciplines including business administration, the physical and social sciences,engineering, humanities, and the arts. These faculty members were selected from a pool ofpotential