There is a pressing need to understand the high rates of attrition from engineering careers, particularly within the first five to ten years of employment. According to the scientific literature, no existing research has systematically examined the gendered organizational socialization experiences of newcomer men and women engineers. Accordingly, this project examines gendered organizational socialization of newcomer engineers. It begins the long-term work of developing processes of acculturation to the engineering profession that are compatible with intersecting non-normative identities, by creating an empirically-supported and engineering-specific model of gendered socialization. The integrated education and research plan is likely to yield a dramatic impact on the field of engineering education by prioritizing the importance of underutilized gender theories, enrolling men in gender research and systems change, and addressing the gap in research on engineering workplaces. Ultimately, this project facilitates greater equality in the socialization of newcomer engineers to decrease attrition from engineering careers and broaden participation of underrepresented groups in engineering.
The objectives of this project are to develop a theoretical model of gendered socialization in civil engineering workplaces and to create research-based interventions for more inclusive socialization. Mixed-methods data will be collected longitudinally over four years, through twice-monthly Individual Socialization Logs (a new instrument developed during the course of this project) and twice-yearly in-depth interviews with thirty diverse newcomer engineers from around the country. Expected project outcomes include identification and characterization of facets of organizational socialization (e.g., practices, processes, relationships and social networks) that are gendered, including how they are gendered intersectionally (i.e., varying across other types of identity, such as race). The research findings and the model created from them are being utilized to create professional formation materials for graduating civil engineering students and civil engineering professionals. Materials are also being implemented nationally and locally in capstone design courses and workshops for engineering companies. Further, this project contributes, simultaneously, to the fields of engineering education, engineering studies, organizational studies, and gender studies.
