Donna Milgram, Executive Director of IWITTS, discusses strategies for educators to recruit and retain more women to technology with Gordon F. Snyder, Jr. and Mike Qaissaunee.
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Las Positas College, one of eight CalWomenTech Project Sites, increased their enrollment of female students in the trades through implementation of their recruitment strategic plan over two years and a variety of creative strategies ranging from free press coverage of their program on a local TV station (and showcasing the clip on their website) to a pink "Women in Technology RULE" emery board/ruler give-away.
In addition to implementing core recruitment strategies provided by the CalWomenTech project, City College of San Francisco's Computer Networking and Information Technology Program, one of eight project sites, incorporated custom recruitment strategies into their annual strategic plans, with a special focus on the college's counseling staff. What's more, adjustments to teaching styles -- based on IWITTS' retention training -- positively impacted completion rates of not only female students, but males as well.
San Diego Mesa Community College, one of eight CalWomenTech Project Sites, used the CalWomenTech Project's core recruitment strategies along with a special focus on women students during their annual GIS day to significantly increase the number of women in their GIS program. Plus, GIS instructors modified their teaching style based on the WomenTech Training they received on retention, resulting in 100% retention of female and male students for several semesters.
Presented at the 2011 ASEE Conference, this paper shares the CalWomenTech Project model and strategies -- many requiring minimal costs and time commitments -- that resulted in increases of female students in technology programs and in improved completion rates for both female and male students. The CalWomenTech Project -- funded and highlighted by the National Science Foundation -- assisted technology programs at eight California two-year colleges in recruiting and retaining more women during an economic recession and state budget crisis that forced the California community college system to cut hundreds of millions of dollars.
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Copyright© American Society for Engineering Education. By viewing this paper, you agree to all the copyright laws protecting it. Milgram, D. (2011). Turning Limited Resources into Increased Recruitment & Retention of Female Students in Technology Programs. The U.S. Conference Proceedings of the 2010 Annual ASEE Conference & Exposition. Vancouver, BC: American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) |
