This quarter I am working with Dr. Lehr and Dr. Finger, the director of the Women’s Engineering Program, to do a research study to ultimately help out with recruitment and retention of female undergraduate engineers at Cal Poly. I have always been interested in this topic and am looking to do my senior project on this subject, specifically of the experiences of female engineers and their view of the lack of women in engineering fields. I also particularly want to focus on women of color in engineering who are said to lead a “double minority status” (Farro) in their major. But for this quarter, with Dr. Finger’s research, I am primarily focusing on trying to figure out how to aim for a higher recruitment and high retention rates of female undergraduate engineers.
So far, the goal is to create a survey to ask first year female students (I think we are still debating if we should ask males or non-first years) specific questions as to what go them interested in engineering and so forth. We have done a literature review, in a sense, to see what has been already done and see what questions other researchers have asked. There were some very interesting finds that I thought would be interesting to include in our survey as well. One that I thought was very interesting was that most female students at the University of Oklahoma’s Industrial Engineering Department, which is actually fifty percent female in their undergraduate program and forty percent female in their faculty, relied on their mothers in regards to their undergraduate education (Harris 190). In another study, the researcher found out the significance that female teachers had on their female students in regards to their interest in engineering (Parviainen).
Based on these articles, many female undergraduates in engineering seem to have been influenced by and relied on other females in their life for support and help. That is one question I would like to ask in our survey. So for our draft survey, I included questions such as: how did you get interested in engineering and whether or not their parents are engineers or not. We are also interested in knowing their ethnicity and socioeconomic status. It is also interesting to see if they have been in any clubs before college that has driven their interest in engineering and exactly how they got interested in studying engineering. There are deeper questions regarding their role in classrooms, whether they have been discouraged by others because of their gender, and points of deflection or overcoming of a negative situation. It is also interesting to see the stereotypes or preconceived notions that these female undergraduates had before entering cal Poly. Like in Parviainen’s study, female undergraduates saw stereotypes of computer scientists as white males who are antisocial, and they went deeper as to how these stereotypes affected and shaped them. Also, I included in our draft survey when comparing to other female undergraduate engineers how they feel, and when comparing to male undergraduate engineers how they feel. I just followed the same questions that Goodman et al. asked when self evaluating themselves to other female or males do they: spend more time and efforts in your class, understand engineering concepts better, better at solving engineering problems, more committed to engineering, work better with other people, have more confidence in your engineering abilities (50).
We are still in the producing and editing the survey and will go over it on Thursday.
Works Cited
Farro, S.A. (2010). Achievements and challenges of undergraduates in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields in the Ronald E. McNair Program. Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering, 70(11-B), 7266-7275.
Goodman, I.F., Cunningham, C.M., Lachapelle, C., Thompson, M., Bittinger, K. Brennan, R.T., Delci, M. (April 2002). A Comprehensive Evaluation of Women in Engineering Programs. Goodman Research Group, Inc., 1-286.
Harris, B.J., Rhoads, T.R., Walden, S.E., Murphy, T.J., Meissler, R., Reynolds, A. (Spring 2004). Gender Equity in Industrial Engineering: A Pilot Study. NWSA Journal, 16(1), 186-193.
Parviainen, M.L. (Fall 2008). The experiences of women in computer science: the importance of awareness and communication. Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, 6(4), 87-94.
I really appreciate the study you are undertaking. I have always thought the underrepresentation of women in science, and in this case, engineering is a very interesting topic and any conclusions from your experiment could definitely help explain why other professions lack female representation, too.
ReplyDeleteI read an article about Stacy Branham, a Ph.D. candidate for computer science at VirginiaTech. She “believes that female role models are valuable assets in computer science,” however, her own role model was her father, who was a computer engineer, which possibly explains why she still declares that “if you don’t see women performing at the highest levels in your field, you think of it as a man’s job subconsciously.” She continued to admit that if someone asked her to draw a picture of a successful scientist, she would probably draw a man. This interview with Branham was very disheartening because even a woman in the computer science field, herself, claimed that she would still draw a portrait of a male if asked to draw a “successful scientist.”
Surveying women in the engineering program at Cal Poly definitely seems like the best and most valuable route to achieving a conclusion about why there is a lack of women in the engineering field. And after reading about Branham’s own example, I think that using her creative idea of suggesting students to draw pictures could be very useful in helping reach more authentic results.
Works Cited
Sarah Watson. "Women underrepresented in science, engineering." Collegiate Times January 20, 2011: 3.
I thought this was an interesting and relevant research topic as I am a female engineer myself. While there has been a large increase in the numbers of women in engineering in recent years, it is still very obvious that engineering is still heavily dominated by males. Most of my engineering classes have just a few other females and there have been more than one where I was the only girl in the class.
ReplyDeleteI also thought it was interesting that there were several studies which suggested that female role models were the most influential for girls in engineering. I would disagree with this statement (from personal experience). Personally, I think it just has to do with the exposure that you were given to engineering concepts and whether or not engineering was presented as a viable and realistic career goal. I come from a family with three brothers, a dad who is a hardware/software engineer and a mom who used to be a programmer before having children. I think probably one of the biggest influences though was just growing up with three brothers (and no sisters). From an early age, I was exposed to trains, airplanes, tractors, tanks, and played with a lot of Legos, Lincoln Logs, K’nex, and other toys and games that emphasized building, designing, and technology of some sort (Hotwheels, model planes, etc). I am curious to see what your survey results show in regards to other female engineers and their opinions and reasons for choosing engineering.
Beverley, I am excited for your project! After hearing about your ideas in ES 390, it is great to see they are taking form now and actions are being made.
ReplyDeleteThe surveys will provide such vital information. I am curious about there being a population of female students who are secretly interested in engineering but have not pursued it as their major. Or maybe female students who never considered it or thought they could pursue it. (Maybe this population does not even exist. . . but it just occurred to me . . . )
Also, how will the surveys be distributed? Through classes and departments? I wonder too how you will record the data. Are you focusing on one particular race or female students of color as a whole?
I hope all students who participate in your survey take it seriously. I am looking forward to hearing more about your project and your findings.
Re: Stacy Branham - Jessica talked about an article written by Stacy Branham at Virginia Tech. I just wanted to say that Stacy actually took 2 courses with me at Virginia Tech during her last semester as an undergraduate! - a course very similar to this one (called "Engineering Cultures") and a course that was called, "Race, Technology, and the Life Sciences." She is amazing, and is working to integrate insights from the humanities and social sciences into her work on human-computer interactions. I am so excited to see her out here "circulating" in our class discussions.
ReplyDeleteBeverly, I think Jessica's comment would be a great addition to our draft of the survey - what toys did you play with growing up AND a question about types and numbers of siblings.
ReplyDeleteHow fun, to see that I have followed Jane to California! Thanks for citing the article, Jessica. There certainly is a lot to be disheartened about. Example: in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech we recently celebrated 10% female enrollment. Now, that is sad! However, I should set the record straight; I was mistakenly misquoted in the article. What I actually said was "studies show that if you ask young children to draw a picture of a scientist, most (over 90% of them) will draw a man." Knowing as much as I do about the issue now, I would certainly draw a woman:)
ReplyDeleteThe other detail left out of the article is that, although my father got me into the field and forced me to stay in it when I told him I wanted to change majors my sophomore year, he is not the reason that I am still in it today. He actually discouraged me from seeking a higher degree. The reason I went on to pursue a PhD is because I had key female mentors (tip of the hat to my mentor Laurian Vega), and I believe to a large degree that my female role models are the reason I am still working at it.
There are many things I could add to this discussion, but one is interesting to me of late. The issue is this: even men that care about women and want to see them succeed against the odds can do damage that they are unaware of. One of many anecdotes:
I was fortunate and hard-working enough to receive a fellowship allocated just for women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields. When two of my male colleagues heard about the nature of my fellowship, they independently said something to the effect of "you're so lucky to be a girl." For some reason, I felt very upset to hear this. After the fact, I realized it was, indeed, insulting, because it not only implies that I may not actually deserve funding on my own merit (i.e. my work is not good enough), but it also denies that there are challenges for women in the field that warrant special treatment.
Anyway, I told my male advisor about these two independent incidents and expressed my concern, and he said "you are reading too much into this, this is not what they meant." Surprisingly, this professor has a long history of officially supporting diversity in the department (serving on diversity committees, getting NSF funding for diversity initiatives, etc.). Then, I went and spoke to one of the only tenured female faculty in the department and she acknowledged my interpretation, offered a great deal of stories from her own experience, and backed up her answer by citing research studies on the issue. What a different reaction! This is one of the reasons why I think it is terribly important to have women in positions of power and in positions to provide mentorship.
I, too, am curious to see the results of your survey. Keep up the exciting, important work!