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Pilot Study of a “Women in Engineering Seminar” That Is Responsive to Regional Attitudes

Abstract

The paper describes a pilot study of a one-hour seminar designed for incoming female freshmen students. The seminar includes many features of existing women in engineering seminars including external guest speakers, introductions to the female faculty members, and presentations by Career Services. Regionally conservative attitudes about family and women’s roles are also addressed in the course through selection of speakers with a variety of personal/professional life solutions as well as supporting materials from the USU ADVANCE Institutional Transformation Award. To overcome the small number of freshmen women interested in engineering, data from the Women’s Experiences in College Engineering project is shared to help the students understand their feelings are typically aligned with a larger body of female students across the country. Student reflections acquired through required essay questions and examinations are presented to help understand whether their career choices are influenced by conservative attitudes toward family and women’s roles. Preliminary retention data is presented.

Introduction

Several engineering programs offer a seminar for female students as a retention strategy. Typically there are two goals for the seminar: inform female students about the many career opportunities available with a degree in engineering, and develop an encouraging, supportive community for the students.1-3 The first goal is accomplished by providing a variety of speakers who share their experiences and offer advice about the many areas and career paths available in engineering. The second goal is accomplished through small group discussions where topics such as “how to get academic help,” “homesickness,” and “what to do and where to go in town: fun things to do” are discussed.4 In some programs, field trips to local companies that employ engineers are also arranged.

Enrollment and graduation of female students in the College of Engineering at Utah State University (USU) is less than the national average. Data published by the National Science Foundation indicate that women accounted for 20% of total undergraduate enrollment in engineering program since 1999 with 18.6% of the bachelor’s degrees awarded in 1998 to graduates of engineering programs typical of those offered at USU.5 At USU over the past five years, 10% of the freshmen in the pre-engineering program have been females and 8% of students graduating with degrees in engineering have been females. As both a recruiting and retention strategy, in Fall 2005, we offered a seminar that included many of the features of the women in engineering seminars described above, including external guest speakers, introductions to the female faculty members, and presentations by Career Services.

In addition to borrowing many of the ideas from a number of existing seminars, the USU seminar was shaped by data from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) freshman survey.6 The 2004 CIRP survey was completed by 79% of the main campus freshman

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Hailey, C. (2006, June), Pilot Study Of A “Women In Engineering Seminar” That Is Responsive To Regional Attitudes Paper presented at 2006 Annual Conference & Exposition, Chicago, Illinois. 10.18260/1-2--620