Intellectual merit: The researchers are conducting a longitudinal, multi-institutional, and multivariate study determining how climate and pedagogy affect the persistence of women in undergraduate engineering programs. Institutional data from 1987-2004 at nine institutions granting 1/12 of the engineering bachelor?s degrees awarded to women will answer the research question, ?How does the persistence of women engineering students vary by race, engineering major, cohort year, and institution, and specifically, what pockets of success can be identified?? The 17-year study period makes it possible to define persistence as the six-year graduation rate in engineering, which anchors the results in the context of national persistence data.
The research uses climate and pedagogy as lenses through which to view the persistence of undergraduate engineering women, leveraging the success of multiple National Science Foundation projects by studying the relationships among a significant amount of previously collected data and establishing the context of those data. A timeline of critical incidents in institutional policy and leadership, enriched by interviews gathering retrospective data from faculty and administrators, clarify the relationships of climate and pedagogy to persistence. Semi-structured interviews of students in populations in which persistence is high are used to clarify the findings. The MIDFIELD dataset includes course sections, making it possible to study the effects of critical mass among women in engineering.
Broader impact: This work builds on the theoretical foundation developed in previous qualitative studies, developing a scaffold of quantitative results that can support the informed decisions of policymakers. Creating a longitudinal perspective of how climate and pedagogy affect persistence will reach multiple stakeholders at engineering institutions--speaking with the authority of large sample sizes as well as with the softer voice of individual students. The result will be a compelling story rather than a report of the result of a single study.
The research team spans multiple engineering disciplines, the social sciences, and human resource development, which is ideal for diffusion to a wide audience. The leadership roles of team members in the American Society of Engineering Education, its Educational Research and Methods division, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Education Society, as well as affiliations with departments of Engineering Education at Purdue, Virginia Tech, and Clemson, and the National Academy of Engineering?s Center for the Advancement of Scholarship on Engineering Education, ensures broad dissemination.
Challenging the Myths This Gender in Science and Engineering (GSE) grant brought together a multidisciplinary team including researchers from engineering, sociology, human resources, and education. We capitalized on a unique opportunity to use a large dataset with many institutions to describe the success of engineering students disaggregated by race and gender. Most datasets are too small to allow for this and, for example, combine all women or all "underrepresented minorities". This suggests that the experiences of all women or minorities are the same. In our work, however, we consider more specific groups such as Asian women, Black men, Hispanic women (Latinas), and Native American women. Along the way, we have found that several commonly held beliefs about engineering students are, in fact, myths. How many can you identify? 1-Myth or Reality? Men are more likely than women to enroll in engineering. 1- Reality Women make up about 20% of engineering students as they have for more than 20 years. This continues to be a problem for engineering as other fields such as medicine, law, and business have attracted many more women. 2-Myth or Reality? Men are more likely than women to switch from engineering to business. 2- Myth Men and women are equally likely to switch from engineering to business. At the end of six years, the most likely destination for men and women is to graduate in engineering. The next most likely is leaving our database (drop out of school, transfer, or take a break) and third is business. 3-Myth or Reality? Men are more likely than women to graduate in engineering. 3- Myth Our data debunked the myth that women drop out at higher rates than men. For all race/ethnicities, the six-year graduation rates in engineering are the same or higher for women than men. The problem is recruitment not retention. See Figure 1. 4-Myth or Reality? If a student enrolls in engineering, gender is more predictive of graduation in engineering than institution. 4-Myth Institution is a much stronger predictor. Institutions show up to 30% variation in graduation rates but men and women graduate in engineering at approximately equal rates for all race/ethnicities. 5-Myth or Reality? If students persist in engineering for eight semesters, they are all about equally likely to graduate. 5-Myth Our research showed that trajectories of persistence are non-linear, gendered, and racialized. It depends on the group and the institution. For example, some institutions do very well with some groups but not others. 6-Myth or Reality? Latino and Latina engineering students are less likely to persist than White students. 6-Myth Not always. Our research showed that Latina transfer students are the most successful among all engineering transfer students. 7-Myth or Reality? Electrical engineering (EE) is the least diverse of engineering disciplines. 7-Myth –In our dataset, EE enrolls 17 % of all engineering students. Black students are particularly drawn to EE. 30% of Black men and 21% of Black women who choose to major in engineering choose EE, more than any other engineering major. 8-Myth or Reality? in the typical engineering classroom, 16% of the students are female. 8-Myth The classrooms in mechanical (ME) and electrical (EE) engineering are about 10% female. However other engineering majors have higher percentages. Because EE and ME are so large, they often dominate discussions of engineering demographics. But their story is not identical to that of smaller engineering majors. 9-Myth or Reality? Students of all races prefer Mechanical Engineering (ME) to Electrical Engineering (EE). 9-Myth White and Latino students are more likely to select ME but Black and Asian students are more likely to select EE. 10-Myth or Reality? Students matriculating in Industrial Engineering (IE) have lower grades in introductory science and math courses. 10-Myth At matriculation, the grades for students in all engineering majors are similar. This debunks the myth that IE students are less academically capable. 11-Myth or Reality? Women are more likely than men to switch into IE. 11-Myth Actually, IE attracts both men and women in about the same percentages. 12-Myth or Reality? All engineering majors graduate about half as many students as they enroll to start. 12-Myth Industrial engineering is unique among engineering majors because it graduates more students than it enrolls to start. IE attracts students once they are enrolled in college. All other majors graduate fewer than they start with. See Figure 2.
