New Orleans, Louisiana
June 26, 2016
June 26, 2016
June 29, 2016
978-0-692-68565-5
2153-5965
Women in Engineering Division Technical Session - Pre-college Programs for Women
Women in Engineering and Pre-College Engineering Education Division
Diversity
10
10.18260/p.27046
https://peer.asee.org/27046
699
SHAWNA L. FLETCHER is Director for the Women in Engineering (WE) Program at Texas A&M University. Her primary responsibilities include outreach, recruitment and retention programs for women students and faculty in the Dwight Look College of Engineering. She has been President of the Arizona Promoters of Applied Science in Education (APASE) since 2006. She holds an M.S degree in Bioengineering and B.S. degrees in Physiological Psychology and Microbiology from Arizona State University. Since 1997, she has been dedicated to engineering recruitment/retention programs and K-12 STEM educational efforts in Arizona, Ohio and Texas.
Nationally recognized programs, such as Project Lead the Way (PLTW), have provided interventions to increase the number of students exposed to engineering principles at the K-12 level. Although numbers of participants are increasing, in many high schools PLTW is offered as an elective and attracts few female students. In an effort to understand classroom dynamics, many PLTW programs show that interest of underrepresented populations mirrors national metrics for women in engineering. Recently, specialized efforts to recruit and retain women have emerged. Partnerships between universities and K-12 educational systems have been created to provide opportunities to increase student engagement.
All-female PLTW Intro to Engineering Design (IED) courses have been developed in several schools to attract more underrepresented students. Over a few short years, specific all-female cohorts have served to increase the number of women at high rates. Though programs with cohorts continue to show success, questions regarding Title IX compliance or violation emerge with single-gender courses offered within public educational settings. This paper will provide an overview of known all-female cohort efforts in Project Lead the Way, an overview of Title IX, and a discussion of whether these cohorts are compliant with gender equity legislation when offered in a public school setting.
Fletcher, S. (2016, June), Title IX and Project Lead the Way: Achieving Equity through All-female Cohorts in Public School Settings Paper presented at 2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana. 10.18260/p.27046
ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2016 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015