We Are Thriving: Increasing the Number of Women in Engineering

Kathryn Redmond; Grace Panther; Mojdeh Asadollahipajouh; Stacey Kulesza; Grace Liang; Rick Evans

Download Paper | Permalink

Conference: 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Publication Date: August 23, 2022
Start Date: June 26, 2022
End Date: June 29, 2022
Conference Session: WIED: Support for All in the WIED Community
Page Count: 14
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--41518
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/41518
Download Count: 299

Paper Authors

biography

Kathryn Redmond University of Nebraska - Lincoln

visit author page

Rising senior at Amherst College studying psychology.

visit author page

biography

Grace Panther University of Nebraska - Lincoln

visit author page

Grace Panther is an Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska Lincoln. She has experience conducting workshops at engineering education conferences and has been a guest editor for a special issue of European Journal of Engineering Education on inclusive learning environments. Her research areas include spatial visualization, material development, faculty discourses on gender, and defining knowledge domains of students and practicing engineers.

visit author page

author page

Associate Professor

visit author page

Download Paper | Permalink

Abstract

An ongoing focus of engineering education research is on increasing the number of women in engineering. Previous studies have primarily focused on examining why the number of women enrolled in engineering colleges remains persistent low. In doing so, while we have gained better understanding of the challenges and barriers women encountered and factors that contribute to such negative experiences, it also, as some scholars have pointed out, has cast a deficit frame to such matters. In this study, we take on a positive stand where we focus on women undergraduate students who not only “stay” but also succeed in engineering programs (that is, our definition of thriving) as a way to locate the personal and institutional factors that facilitate such positive outcomes.

Our initial pilot study involved two female engineering undergraduate students at an R1 university. Each student was interviewed three times. While each of the interviews in the sequence had slightly different focus, the overall goal was to understand the women’s autobiographic and educational experiences leading to their paths to engineering and participation in the engineering project teams. The inductive thematic analysis revealed several primary findings which subsequently played a major role in developing a codebook for the current study. Building upon what is learned from the pilot study, the current study uses a layered multi-case study design involving three institutions: a public/private Ivy League and statutory land-grand research university in the Northeast, a public land-grant research university in the Midwest, and a public land-grant research university in the Southwest which is also designated as MSI/HSI. In addition to the interview method, data collection also contains documents and artifacts. For the purpose of this paper, we zone in onto the data collected in the first interviews, known as the “life history” where we mainly learn about the women undergraduate participants’ personal-familial contexts that contribute their entry to majoring in engineering as identified by the women themselves.

Preliminary findings indicate that: (1) our participants tend to have supportive families; (2) while all experienced gender biases, not everyone has formed a critical consciousness of sexism; and (3) being able to actually engage “doing” something and creating a product is key to the women’s finding joy in engineering and associating self with the field/profession. It is important to note that the second interviews are underway which focuses on the educational journey of the participants in relation to engineering identity development and project team experiences. The ultimate goal for the study is to develop a theoretical framework speaking to a multifaceted model of forces (micro as autobiographic, macro as institutional, and in-between or middle-level as team-based) in shaping women’s entry and advance in engineering programs – one that recognizes the variations in institutional type, resource availability, and structural and cultural characteristics and traditions in teams, but uses such differences to show possibilities of more versatile ways for diversifying pathways for women and other minoritized groups to thrive in engineering.

Citation
Format

Redmond, K., & Panther, G., & Asadollahipajouh, M., & Evans, R., & Kulesza, S., & Liang, G. (2022, August), We Are Thriving: Increasing the Number of Women in Engineering Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--41518

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - An ongoing focus of engineering education research is on increasing the number of women in engineering. Previous studies have primarily focused on examining why the number of women enrolled in engineering colleges remains persistent low. In doing so, while we have gained better understanding of the challenges and barriers women encountered and factors that contribute to such negative experiences, it also, as some scholars have pointed out, has cast a deficit frame to
such matters. In this study, we take on a positive stand where we focus on women undergraduate students who not only “stay” but also succeed in engineering programs (that is, our definition of thriving) as a way to locate the personal and institutional factors that facilitate such positive
outcomes.

Our initial pilot study involved two female engineering undergraduate students at an R1 university. Each student was interviewed three times. While each of the interviews in the sequence had slightly different focus, the overall goal was to understand the women’s autobiographic and educational experiences leading to their paths to engineering and participation in the engineering project teams. The inductive thematic analysis revealed several primary findings which subsequently played a major role in developing a codebook for the current study. Building upon what is learned from the pilot study, the current study uses a layered multi-case study design involving three institutions: a public/private Ivy League and statutory land-grand research university in the Northeast, a public land-grant research university in the Midwest, and a public land-grant research university in the Southwest which is also designated as MSI/HSI. In addition to the interview method, data collection also contains documents and artifacts. For the purpose of this paper, we zone in onto the data collected in the first interviews, known as the “life history” where we mainly learn about the women undergraduate participants’ personal-familial contexts that contribute their entry to majoring in engineering as identified by the women themselves.

Preliminary findings indicate that: (1) our participants tend to have supportive families; (2) while all experienced gender biases, not everyone has formed a critical consciousness of sexism; and (3) being able to actually engage “doing” something and creating a product is key to the women’s finding joy in engineering and associating self with the field/profession. It is important to note that the second interviews are underway which focuses on the educational journey of the participants in relation to engineering identity development and project team experiences. The ultimate goal for the study is to develop a theoretical framework speaking to a multifaceted model of forces (micro as autobiographic, macro as institutional, and in-between or middle-level as team-based) in shaping women’s entry and advance in engineering programs – one that recognizes the variations in institutional type, resource availability, and structural and cultural characteristics and traditions in teams, but uses such differences to show possibilities of more versatile ways for diversifying pathways for women and other minoritized groups to thrive in engineering.
AU  - Kathryn Redmond
AU  - Grace Panther
AU  - Mojdeh Asadollahipajouh
AU  - Rick Evans
AU  - Stacey Kulesza
AU  - Grace Liang
CY  - Minneapolis, MN
DA  - 2022/08/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - We Are Thriving: Increasing the Number of Women in Engineering
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/41518
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--41518
ER  -