1st Year Female Engineers at Cal Poly to Assist Recruitment and Retention

Since my last research progress report, we have completed a lot of our project. Dr. Lehr edited and produced the final version of our survey. Some questions that we added was listing the three most important reasons for choosing engineer as their major; what other majors or universities did they consider switching to; their thoughts on what a “good engineer” should entail; and how they perceive their position in engineering compared to their male counterparts. I have just finished typing up all the questions onto Survey Monkey but we still need to format some of the questions better and figure out the range of some of the questions (questions like: what year are you born, when did you graduate high school). Also, there is not that many question formats on Survey Monkey, so I had to make separate some questions within questions. We also may want to think about how much room we should allow them to write. I kept a lot at 50 words, but we may want to extend the amount.

We also completed the IRB (Institutional Review Board) forms for the Human Subjects Committee, since we are giving our survey out to Cal Poly students and need to get an approval before having subjects take the survey. In the IRB packet, we included the Human Subjects Protocol Approval Form, Informed Consent Form, Cover Page, and our Final Survey Draft.

For the Human Subjects Protocol Approval Form, we projected the duration to be a year-long (from February 2011 to February 2012). We also have to include possible risks and what measure will be taken to minimize those risks. We included that there may be minor psychological risks that may occur and provided consultation from either Helene Finger, the director of Women’s Engineering Program and also a researcher for this project, and also Cal Poly’s Counseling and Psychological Services. Also, possible incentives for participations may be a raffle to be entered to win prizes that may include campus gifts. We only need a “minimal review” since there’s no deception of the subjects involved and there are not a lot of risks involved in our study and subjects are remained anonymous and cannot be identified by the researchers.

For our Informed Consent Form, we made it clear to our participants the possible risks and the consultation. We also inform them that it will take 20 to 30 minutes long, except now I think we should change it to 25 to 35 because of the increase amount of questions. We also made it clear that they will remain anonymous throughout the whole study and will never be asked to provide their name.

Our cover page basically stated our purpose and methods. Our purpose is to assist Cal Poly’s Women’s Engineering Program with the recruitment and retention of female engineering students. WEP (Women’s engineering program) will supply the contact information for the female engineering majors in College of Engineering and also BioResource and Agricultural Engineering (BRAE) and Architectural Engineering (ARCE) that is in other colleges.

We are very close to being done with all the preparations to send out the survey. We just need to edit the survey layout a bit on SurveyMonkey.com. Also, we need to wait for the approval from the Human’s Subjects Committee to continue on in our research project.

Future Generations

The topic of women in engineering is one that has been growing in importance to me lately because although I am not a woman in engineering, I do have a 10-year old sister who is getting closer and closer to having to decide her major for college every year. She's a very smart kid, having read and understood books like the Harry Potter series at the age of 9 and testing in at an 8th grade reading level in 3rd grade (I believe she's up to 9th or 10th now). She is also great in math and has an interest in science. I have, of course, been trying to subtly influence her towards engineering by showing her the cool projects I have worked on, or by explaining what I know of how things work. My dad, who used to tease her by jokingly telling her she would become a doctor to support him financially, has now focused his attentions on encouraging her to follow in my footsteps after I told him the average starting salary of computer science and software engineering. I was excited when I heard her steadfast and resounding “no”s turn into “maybe”s. I would love to see her become an engineer, even if it's not exactly in the same field as me. That is, if that's what she wants.

This brings up the issue of what men in engineering can do to help. I know that as a role-model to younger students and children I interact with as an engineer I can say a lot more about how male engineers should act around and treat female engineers with my actions than with my words. My male engineering friends and I often forget what a “boys club” mentality we've developed from not being around many women, and act accordingly. As Bix states, “Evidence confirms suspicions that while equal opportunity sentiment and federal legislation might have helped open some doors for some women in the 1970s, the changing language and imagery of employment ads to denote hiring diversity did not solve more fundamental problem,” so while there has been progress in trying to change these attitudes, they still persist. I do know very intelligent female engineering students for whom I have a lot of respect. But as much as I try to adjust and monitor my own attitude, I have to influence the attitudes of those around me as well.

I am also slightly concerned about over-encouragement. How do I challenge my sister but make sure I don't push too hard? How will I know if it's something she really wants to do and isn't just doing it because her family wants her to? As a current engineering student and one who's known others that don't like it, I know that if it's not something she really wants to do and does not enjoy it she will fail, and that's the last thing I want to happen.

Bix (2004), “From “Engineeresses” to “Girl Engineers” to “Good Engineers”: A History of Women’s U.S. Engineering Education”

How Minority Groups in Malta are Kept Oppressed and Potential Solutions through Education

Abstract

Women have had an extremely difficult time gaining equality in many scenarios in Malta, especially those in STEM fields. Likewise, various minorities have also struggled to gain equal rights and opporunities. Physical abuse or simple lack of education are a couple of the many factors that keep these minority groups where they are in the social ladder. In addition to exploring further causes to how and why these groups are kept as lower class citizens than the working white male, I hope to uncover potential progress in more contemporary scenarios, as well as possible solutions. While I am a fan of further and complete education to solve problems including these, other methods are brought up and discussed through various sources, so I anticipate a wide variety of options.

Annotated Bibliography

Attard, G. (2010, June 16). Maternity, paternity leave – the other side of the coin. Retrieved February 6, 2011, from National Council of Women of Malta: http://www.ncwmalta.com/maternitypaternityleave

This article, written by president of the National Council of Women of Malta, stresses the importance of equality for women with dependent children in the workplace. Even recently, there is an overwhelming gap between employment rates of men compared to that of women (over 25%). In the article, Attard stresses the importance of keeping women in the labor market: mainly due to the fact that when women are forced to leave jobs due to pregnancy, they often do no return. This article in particular will be useful in my research because it is a prime example of how women are far from equal to men (in the workplace in particular). It also provides slight suggestions to go about possibly remedying this problem in the Maltese society. Unfortunately, it is only one of the many problem areas that women face, but, according to Attard, is one on the forefront of being remedied. I believe that the solution will be a stepping stone to fixing various other problems as well, so I understand Attard's focus and commitment.

Attard, G. (2008, July 25). Sending a strong message against violence – More action for less violence. Retrieved February 6, 2011, from National Council of Women of Malta: http://www.ncwmalta.com/councilviews?id=6

Another large problem women face is one of domestic violence. Statistics show that "one in three women will be victims of violence during their lifetime" and that "more women die from the consequences of violence than from cancer." This is a horrible problem that women face in not just Malta but Europe as a whole. It is also a problem that creates fundamental problems of equality between women and men: one that cannot be overcome without significant outside influence. It is a problem that perpetuates the dominant image of the male. This is an extremely important point in my research and gives one fundamental cause (or continuation) of this drastic inequality. I think the method of solving this problem provided by Attard is an important: one that is the responsibility of all society to combat, which I believe will play a large role in my research.

Caruana-Dingli, M. (2005). Integrating ICT and multicultural aspects within a classroom: the SAIL project. Intercultural Education , 16 (4), 395-404.

This article focuses on using Information and Communication Technology in the classroom to more effectively teach, but more importantly, stress the involvement and education of minority groups. There is an important overlap here between minority groups and technology, although maybe not the traditional one (in the workforce). This article brings education into the picture, which I would also like to focus on somewhat for my research project. Fundamentally, I believe with better, or maybe more appropriate, education, many problems that exist can begin to be dissolved. Notably, when the education of minority groups is becoming more effective, which is where the SAIL (Specialized Animated Interactive Learning) program becomes important.

Fenech, D. (1999). Malta. European Journal of Political Research , 457-463.

Fenech, D. (2000). Malta. European Journal of Political Research , 458-461.

Fenech, D. (2001). Malta. European Journal of Political Research , 361-364.

Fenech, D. (2002). Malta. European Journal of Political Research , 1033-1036.

Fenech, D. (2003). Malta. European Journal of Political Research , 1026-1028.

Fenech, D. (2004). Malta. European Journal of Political Research , 1078-1083.

Fenech, D. (2005). Malta. European Journal of Political Research , 1119-1123.

Fenech, D. (2006). Malta. European Journal of Political Research , 1198-1200.

Fenech, D. (2007). Malta. European Journal of Political Research , 1038-1040.

Fenech, D. (2008). Malta. European Journal of Political Research , 1071-1073.

Fenech, D. (2009). Malta. European Journal of Political Research , 1047-1051.

Fenech, D. (2010). Malta. European Journal of Political Research , 1089-1094.

The above twelve articles are going to used essentially as a single reference. They are mostly short articles of statistics about demographics within Malta over various years. These statistics include significant amounts of data about elections and political proceedings throughout their respective years. What I found interesting, and hope to use to my advantage, are the statistics about the political offices held during each year. Also provided (and arguably the most important part to me and my research project), is the gender of the office holder. I think it will be interesting and insightful to compare all of the years provided to one another to see if female prevalence in political offices increases at all over the 12 years I have. Also noted in the last 6, are prevalent issues in national policies throughout the year: these may touch on issues both about women and people of color, which would aid towards my project.

Knepper, P. (2009). The 'White Slave Trade and the Music Hall Affair in 1930 Malta. Journal of Contemporary History , 44 (2), 205-220.

This article focuses on the 1930s in Malta which aroused allegations of prostitution of English women who were present due to jobs at the Music Hall. These happened to be false, but spawned an investigation of these types of practices which aimed at foreigners. This article is especially interesting because the military forces from Britain that came in to deal with the problem shifted focus to the “immoral character of women” rather than the problem at hand. This is a point which has many implications and will hopefully contribute to my research project with some useful points. This Music Hall Affair did not end up directly affecting human rights for immigrants coming to Malta, but showed the fears of foreigners in the face of a “limited world view” as shown by those in the military.

Recruitment and Retention of Female Undergraduate Engineers

Beverley Kwang

Annotated Bibliography

Abstract

California Polytechnic State University’s Women’s Engineering Program (WEP) has made it their goal to help recruit and retain female engineers. With the undergraduate student body of the College of Engineering amounting to 85 percent men and 15 percent women, WEP is still working hard towards finding out exactly what attracts and who encourages women to engineering and their opinions and feelings on how their gender has influenced or had no influence on their undergraduate engineering experiences.

Fox, M.F, Sonnert, G., Nikiforova, I. (Jun. 2009). Successful Programs for Undergraduate Women in Science and Engineering: Adapting versus Adopting the Institutional Environment. Research in Higher Education, 50(4), 333-353.

The focus of this study was to look at the size, creativity, and diversity that women contribute to the scientific and engineering workforce (2), and also to question at the idea of social equity in these workforces. The researches focused on forty- nine programs in forty-five institutions in the United States that involve undergraduate women in science and engineering in the years of 2000 and 2001. They selected 10 programs to look at more in depth and judge which one is the 5 most successful programs and also the 5 least successful programs. They judged this off of the growth or decline of the percentage of women among bachelor degree recipients. The researchers conducted interviews with the program directors in person and through the phone. Some of the interview questions include:

1. definition of what is “at issue” for the participation/performance of women in undergraduate engineering and science,

2. solutions represented by activities undertaken in programs,

3. perceptions of what is important for a director of a program (personal characteristics and educational background),

4. linkeage between program and broader environment, including institution, administration, faculty, in which it exists,

5. aspirations and directions for future of the program. (7)

Problems that the directors of the programs saw were the limited numbers of women recruited and enrolled, faculty and classroom bias against under-represented groups, grading system that “weeds-out” students, and a “pipeline of support” for graduate study that is less helpful to women than men undergraduates (8). This really relates to what we talked about in class with the pipeline for engineering education and the weeding out of women and people of color in engineering. The most successful programs also saw that solutions that can help out women undergraduates are mentoring, residence hall clusters, hands-on research experience, and faculty involvement (10). Also, those who are most successful found better relationships to institutional context. They saw a more active stance with the institutional environment and were seeking for broader associations and links to networks.

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.

This article studies the University of Oklahoma’s Industrial Engineering Department and found out that they have achieved gender equity in fall 2003. Fifty percent of the undergraduate program was females and forty percent of the faculty was females. They found out that only two of the six female undergraduates they interviewed had parents (in both case, the fathers) with a STEM background. They also found out that they relied on their mothers in regards to their undergraduate education (190). This may be a question that we may be interested in asking our interviewees: who do you go to for help or guidance regarding your undergraduate education (190). The researchers also found out that the female students were exposed to computers later than the male students (late childhood to adulthood and early childhood to early adolescence, respectively) (190). I thought it was a good question to ask the interviewees what they like about their majors (which all of the females responded that they liked the people orientation rather than the males’ response of interest in management (191)). I was also interested how they found out how some females encountered a series of male’s sexist behaviors. I would like to go further and ask how did they deal with or handle these negative responses from others.

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.

Although this study was not done on women in engineering, I believe women in computer science have experiences similar to women in engineering, due to the lack of women in these fields. Like other studies done, this study focused on the influence of parents, who have similar jobs (i.e. engineering, computer science), have on their own choice in their major. They also found a significant influence due to female teachers subjects had, which led them to that same choice. The researcher also found out that female students in computer science programs were far less exposed to computer science comparing to their male classmates. What was different about this article from other articles was that the author mentions the importance that stereotypes of computer scientists (i.e. white, antisocial males) have on women (4). This article suggested questions that I would like to add to our survey such as: what was the subject’s stereotypes of engineering and how has that affected them, in a negative or positive way? And if they did, how have they overcome those stereotypes? Also, how do they see themselves as a minority in their major and classroom atmosphere?

Sinkele, C.S, Mupinga, D.M. (Jan. 2011). The Effectiveness of Engineering Workshops in Attracting Females into Engineering Fields: A Review of the Literature. Clearing House, 84(1), 37-42.

Workshops are created to get more females interested in engineering. Questions that they listed that is relevant to our study are: what factors influence girls to study in engineering fields (3), does having a family member who is an engineer help increase the interests and knowledge in engineering (4). The researchers found out that workshops consisting of only females make it more comfortable for the girls because they won’t feel like they are being compared to boys and have less fear of failing.

Then, they focused on a study done by Anderson and Gilbride (2007) and listed specific questions from their study:

1. How knowledgeable of and interested in engineering were Toronto-area high school students?

2. Did having an engineer as a family member increase knowledge/interest in engineering?

3. Did the educational environment, co-ed versus all-girl, influence a girl’s knowledge/interest in engineering?

4. Did a hands-on engineering content workshop increase the student’s knowledge/interest in engineering?

Questions that I thought were good to ask are questions number 2 and 3. And also what workshops or activities did the students participate in.

Vogt, C.M., Hocevar, D., Hagedorn, L.S. (May/June 2007). A social Cognitive Construct Validation: Determining Women’s and Men’s Engineering Programs. The Journal of Higher Education, 78(3), 337-364.

This paper notes that women are the majority in humanities and arts, except only make up one-fourth of the degrees in computer science and less than one-fifth of the degrees in physics. In engineering, only nineteen percent of the undergraduate and master’s programs are women. The authors used seven hundred engineers to look at the environmental variables, which includes discrimination and academic integration, and also looked at self variables, which included academic self-confidence and self-efficacy. This qualitative study was helpful in mapping out the relationships between GPA and self-efficacy. They also found that discrimination had the biggest relationship with self confidence/ self efficacy. The findings had found that females felt greater discrimination than males. The flaws with this article were that the statistics were gathered in 2000, a decade ago. This can contribute to our study by seeing if GPA actually has a relationship with self confidence and their comfort with the major.

Research Progress Report #1 | Beverley Kwang

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.

Research Progress Report #1 - Joseph White: Gender & Racial Differences in Malta

I will be researching the areas of gender and race differences in Malta. This will focus on positions of these demographics in both professional and households fields as well as in, specifically, science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. One note: in the household environment, I have found that domestic violence is exceedingly prevalent. It seems that this fact may give a sign as to where the rest of these topics currently lie. These topics will also include historical as well as contemporary patterns of these statuses.

I am currently focused on various papers which include topics such as slavery (historical) and SAIL, a multicultural engineering project initiative (contemporary) to name just a couple. Other papers I have found do not focus directly on these topics, but I hope to find useful information within them such as specific breakdowns by year of things including population, or gender and age of political offices. This data is given for many consecutive years; therefore, I hope to see some kind of pattern or maybe see a drastic change in women’s or other civil rights as time progresses, possibly even correlating with times of other civil rights movements around the world. Interestingly, Malta did not grant women suffrage until the late 1940’s (compare this to the 1921 granting of women’s suffrage in the US). Women also did not have equal right in family law until the 1990s. It will be interesting to see how these comparatively late movements for women play into their current place in the professional fields. In regards to this, I have found that at the very least, women are extremely under-represented in management positions.

It is a bit difficult to find data due to a small amount of research done on these topics in Malta. Another challenge is looking specifically for STEM areas of interest when they concern women or people of color. This is due to the fact that most papers or sources of information simply talk about the field and the research done, rather than who is performing the research: making it difficult to identify how significant a role women and people of color played in these fields.

Concepts and themes I am focusing on include whether or not there is a significant segregation in the workforce based upon gender or ethnicity (especially in STEM fields). The approach I have found (and believe will be) most successful is not to look for articles relating to STEM and see if they touch on the subjects I am focused on: this is unrealistic. But rather look for articles focusing on women and people of color in Malta, and STEM fields will be a bonus.

I have also found a prevalence of contemporary articles as opposed to historical articles. This, I believe is for 2 reasons. One, research from Malta is somewhat rare and most research has occurred in the recent past. Second, there is more of a focus now than ever on STEM fields which promotes further publications of such topics.

I hope to narrow down my searching and specify what I should be concentrating on based on knowledge I gain from some of the articles I have. A lot of the (somewhat) historical data has given me a better idea of what to look for in regards to these topics.