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Retention Programming for Graduate Students: An Innovative Group Mentoring Component Abstract

The Women in Engineering Program (WIEP) was introduced at Purdue University in 1969, with a focus on offering educational enhancement activities for women interested in pursuing engineering degrees. Programming has evolved over the past 38 years to include a K-12 outreach program, undergraduate recruiting activities, and graduate, undergraduate and faculty retention programs. Specifically to address the needs of our female graduate population, the Graduate Mentoring Program (GMP) was established in 1994. For more than 13 years, the WIEP Graduate Mentoring Program has provided a supportive environment to enable female engineering students to share information and strategies to achieve success personally, academically, and professionally. The goal of the GMP is to provide the participants with a networking arena to foster academic goals, establish personal connections, develop leadership and mentoring skills, and address their personal aspirations. These goals are achieved within the framework of a networking mentoring model which has been outlined by Walthall, Holloway and Reklaitis.1 They found that students who participated in the WIEP GMP were more likely to be retained in the Purdue University College of Engineering graduate program due to the support network and community environment such a group provides. However, due to a recent decline in participation, an innovative departmental-based group mentoring component was introduced to the program in Fall 2007. The goal of the component is to encourage participants to act as both mentors and mentees when their vast, diverse experience allows. Instead of suppressing (or failing to recognize) the participants life experiences and acquired knowledge with one-on-one mentoring, our program encourage students to share their numerous experience though the group mentoring activities. This paper will provide an overview of the structure of the Purdue University Women in Engineering Graduate Mentoring Program, explore the participant data for the Graduate Mentoring Program, describe the innovative departmental-based group mentoring component, and examine the formative and summative evaluations provided by the participants.

Introduction

Hall and Sandler originally coined the term “chilly climate” to summarize the difficulties encountered by undergraduate women in the classroom.2 However, through further research they extended this term to include female faculty, administrator and graduate students both inside and outside of the classroom.3, 4 “Chilly climate” is used to describe an environment where women have feelings of isolation, feel subtle discrimination, and experience other persistent inequalities. While the initial study is almost 30 years old, and significant improvements have been made to the academic environment, female students still feel the “chilly climate”. Litzler, Lange and Brainard show that the “chilly climate” in combination with the traditional culture of science and engineering disciplines is negatively associated with graduate student advancement and retention.5 They found that women are more likely than men to feel isolated, that the pace is quicker, the workload is greater, and experience gender discrimination. Therefore, Litzler et al. contend that departments that can create a climate that is “interactive and facilitating” (i.e. mentors and advisors that care about student success) will lead to higher career commitment from their female students.5

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Zurn-Birkhimer, S., & Holloway, B. (2008, June), Retention Programming For Graduate Students: An Innovative Group Mentoring Component Paper presented at 2008 Annual Conference & Exposition, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 10.18260/1-2--3753