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Gender-Based Comparison of Creative Self-Efficacy, Mindset, and Perceptions of Undergraduate Engineering Students

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Conference

2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Portland, Oregon

Publication Date

June 23, 2024

Start Date

June 23, 2024

End Date

July 12, 2024

Conference Session

Women in Engineering Division (WIED) Technical Session 8: Leadership and Persistence

Tagged Division

Women in Engineering Division (WIED)

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Permanent URL

https://strategy.asee.org/47491

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Paper Authors

biography

Christine Michelle Delahanty National Science Foundation Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-9092-1561

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Dr. Delahanty is a Program Director at NSF in the Division of Undergraduate Education (EDU/DUE), and has a background in physics, electrical engineering, and STEM Education, with a concentration in creativity and innovation. Her research focuses on creative self-efficacy, creative mindset, and perceptions of engineering majors, particularly women, to offer insight into why there are so few women in the major and in the profession. She was an NSF ATE Mentor Connect Mentor Fellow in 2022. She is an Emeritus Professor of Engineering and Physics at Bucks County Community College where she was the Principal Investigator of two NSF Advanced Technological Education (ATE) grants, focusing on workforce readiness, and creating pathways from non-credit into credit programs. She also taught at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) in the School of Engineering for 15 years. With funding from these ATE grants she created two technician education programs, and enhanced the engineering major at her community college. Dr. Delahanty established technical, college level, programs of study for modernized classroom and laboratory including six online course platforms that meet Quality Matters (QM) standards. She was the faculty advisor to student research teams, where two teams made the final round of the AACC Community College Innovation Challenge (CCIC) in 2016 and 2017. Dr. Delahanty has developed and conducted STEM focused outreach initiatives to community groups and in K-12 schools with a higher percentage of underrepresented and underserved students. Prior to her teaching career, Dr. Delahanty was an electrical engineer at General Electric Company in both military and commercial satellite communications.

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Abstract

This study builds on prior research, and compares the creative self-efficacy, creative mindset, and perspectives of engineering as creative of female and male undergraduate engineering majors. The intention is to help to provide insight into why only approximately 20% of engineering graduates are women, 15% of female engineering graduates never enter the profession, and the engineering field is comprised of only 16.5% women. To better understand why women choose engineering, their perspectives on creativity, and how they connect to success in engineering, a mixed methods study was conducted to analyze how creative self-efficacy (CSE), creative mindset, and lived experiences lead women undergraduate students to choose engineering. The initial study was comprised of a survey of CSE, and creative mindset distributed to undergraduate women engineering majors, and interviews of selected volunteers who completed the survey. The synthesis of findings from the initial study revealed that CSE and creative mindset were related to lived experiences. This research, which extended the initial study to include male participants, sought to help to answer the research question, "How do creative self-efficacy, creative mindset, and perceptions of engineering as a creative field compare between female and male undergraduate engineering students?" The survey was distributed nationally to engineering majors and engineers in the field. Analysis of a subset of survey responses from undergraduate engineering majors that included 197 women and 211 men revealed that (1) for all students, as both GPA and CSE increased, Growth Creative Mindset (GCM) or the belief that creativity can be cultivated increased. (2) women were less likely than the men to have a Fixed Creative Mindset (FCM), or the belief that creativity cannot be improved, (3) CSE had no effect on FCM for women, but for men, as CSE increased the belief that creativity cannot be improved also increased, (4) for women, progression in the engineering major, and for both groups, succeeding to the senior year contributed to the increased belief that engineering is a creative field.

Delahanty, C. M. (2024, June), Gender-Based Comparison of Creative Self-Efficacy, Mindset, and Perceptions of Undergraduate Engineering Students Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://strategy.asee.org/47491

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