Intellectual Merit: Northeastern University, Rochester Institute of Technology, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, and the University of Wyoming will partner in a research study designed to investigate the hypothesis that women's participation in formal undergraduate engineering programs that provide work experiences while enrolled (e.g., cooperative education or internships), leads to enhanced self-efficacy and an increased likelihood of retention through graduation. Although all four schools offer cooperative education or internship programs, Northeastern University and Rochester Institute of Technology require them. Using a variety of survey research tools, this project seeks to isolate those factors and experiences that contribute most to the development of positive self-efficacy beliefs and, ultimately, to the retention of women in undergraduate engineering programs. The role of self-efficacy will be examined and compared to other factors in order to develop a model that demonstrates how demographic variables, work experiences, contextual supports, and three dimensions of self-efficacy (work, academic, and career) interact to predict retention.
Self-efficacy theory has been used to explain the career development of women, especially in male-dominated careers such as engineering. Self-efficacy beliefs are considered the primary cognitive determinants of behavior, including whether a behavior will be initiated, how much effort will be expended, and how long behavior will be sustained in the face of obstacles. This research will expand the existing knowledge base about the role of work experiences and self-efficacy for women in undergraduate engineering programs by addressing the following hypotheses:
- Self-efficacy is the principal predictor of retention of women in undergraduate engineering programs. - Cooperative education and internships, as formal work experience features of undergraduate programs, constitute a critical predictor of women?s retention directly and indirectly through their impact on self-efficacy. - Contextual support variables affect work, career, and academic self-efficacy as well as retention both directly and indirectly through self-efficacy. - Demographic variables have an independent effect on retention but also interact with contextual variables and with self-efficacy to indirectly affect retention.
Data will be collected using a survey instrument featuring a work self-efficacy inventory. Each school will gather accurate retention figures by tracking individual student files instead of institutional methods that tend to use a "black box" approach of comparing the number of students entering in with the number of students graduating. The data will be analyzed using regression and path analyses to determine how the variables interact to predict retention.
Broader Impacts: This study will have wide-ranging implications for undergraduate engineering programs. The resulting model will enable university administrators to discriminate among a variety of program supports, such as work experience and advising programs, and their relationship to retention. Many engineering colleges already offer cooperative education and internship programs but have little data about the impact of these programs or how to leverage them. This research provides a unique way to connect gender and self-efficacy theory to undergraduate engineering programs while addressing the critical student outcomes of efficacy (especially work self-efficacy) and degree attainment.
This study was designed to investigate the hypothesis that women’s participation in undergraduate engineering programs that provide work experiences while enrolled (for example: cooperative education or internships) leads to enhanced self-efficacy and an increased likelihood of retention through graduation. Self-efficacy can be defined as the degree to which one feels confident in completing a task. This project specifically examined three overarching domains of self-efficacy: academic, work, and career. The research was accomplished through the creation of a survey instrument that was administered to undergraduate women and men engineering students at three times during their undergraduate education (starting in the sophomore year) at four participating universities: Northeastern University (NU), Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (VTech), and the University of Wyoming (UWy). These schools were selected because two were predominantly "co-op" schools (NU and RIT) and two were not. Specific tasks included: gathering student data, conducting statistical analysis (to determine significant results), and preparing papers and presentations to share results with others. The findings verified the pathways model proposed by this study. Academic self-efficacy and contextual support in all time periods were found to be critical to retention. Contextual support (such as from a mentor or advisor) was found to be particularly important to women and appears to serve as encouragement to stay in school and in engineering. Work self-efficacy, developed by students between their second and fourth years in school, was also an important factor in retention, though it is strongly tied to the students' participation in co-op programs. Besides academic self-efficacy, the overwhelming critical predictor of retention was the number of co-ops. Among the demographic variables, a high GPA was also found to be an inducement to persist in engineering and in school. It was also found, at the second survey point of the study, that a student's prior SAT/ACT scores had a measurable effect on retention. Among the contextual support variables, support from friends and from one's college at the time of the first survey was found to explain retention. In an unexpected but modest finding, those students who persisted in the major and in school were more critical of their instructors than those who left. Finally, those students who were accustomed to work over a relatively long period of time were more inclined to leave the university compared to those who had less work experience in their lifetimes. These results point to some possible methods to improve the retention of undergraduate engineering students. Although many engineering students have access to co-ops, many do not participate because of personal preferences or because their university hasn’t made the financial or human resource commitment to provide for a program of formal placements along with support. Nevertheless, the benefit in terms of retention seems to be worth the investment. Although co-op can be an important resource to enhance work self-efficacy, universities also need to find ways to enhance and develop students’ academic self-efficacy. There may be no substitute for continuing to provide a range of support services to students. Support especially for women and for under-represented students can be enhanced by providing academic counselors and mentors, offering living/learning communities, affording them exposure to role models, and upgrading instruction to be more experiential than rote. Although these support services are thought to be especially important during the first year of college, they should be sustained throughout the collegiate experience. The results from this research study have been published in five proceedings and one journal article, and presented at eight conferences. These publications and presentations have been recognized with five awards including best overall conference paper, best conference session, and best research paper in the field of cooperative education. A list of publications and other information about this research can be found on the project website: www.coe.neu.edu/pathways/
