CAEE conducted multi-year studies with over 5,400 students at more than 20 universities, and made sure to oversample for gender and race in order to identify ways to increase diversity in engineering. Section 2.9 of this report focuses on “Summarizing Results about Diversity” and shows how female engineering students tend to approach design differently from male students and report less confidence and course preparation to do design. According to this study, mentors were also more likely to influence female students to study engineering than male students.
Download a PDF of the full report from CAEE.
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Atman, C. J., Sheppard, S. D., Turns, J., Adams, R. S., Fleming, L. N., Reed, S., Streveler, R. A., Smith, K. A., Miller, R. L., Leifer, L. J., Yasuhara, K., Lund, D. (2010). Enabling Engineering Student Success: The Final Report for the Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education. San Rafael, CA: Morgan & Claypool Publishers. Retrieved from http://www.engr.washington.edu/caee/CAEE%20final%20report%2020101102.pdf |
To reduce isolation, the literature recommends grouping two or more female or minority students together when group work is performed in courses where they are underrepresented, but it can be time consuming for instructors to hand select ideal groups. GroupEng – an open-source program available to all educators – was created to make it easy for instructors to use variables such as gender, race, student performance (e.g. early test scores), and student interests to auto generate balanced groups in minutes. This paper by the creators of GroupEng talks about the research behind the program, compares the use of GroupEng with hand selected groups in real courses, and explains how any instructor can use the program in their STEM course.
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Dimiduk, T. G., & Dimiduk, K. (2011). Effectively Assign Student Groups by Applying Multiple User-prioritized Academic and Demographic Factors Using a New Open Source Program, GroupEng. Conference Proceedings of WEPAN 2011 National Conference Advancing Women: Transforming Engineering Education. Seattle, WA: Women in Engineering ProActive Network (WEPAN). Retrieved from http://www.groupeng.org/files/GroupEng_Paper_WEPAN.pdf |
The CalWomenTech Project: Using Surveys to Inform Retention Strategies of Female Technology Students
What retention and support strategies do women students in STEM courses find most helpful? In the third year of the CalWomenTech Project, IWITTS collected 60 survey responses from female students in technology courses in which they were underrepresented at seven California community colleges to find out. This paper from the WEPAN 2010 Conference publishes results from that survey and discusses how the colleges used those results to choose which retention strategies to implement.
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Milgram, D. (2010). The CalWomenTech Project: Using Surveys to Inform Retention Strategies of Female Technology Students. Conference Proceedings of 2010 NAMEPA/WEPAN 4th Joint Conference Setting Sail for the Future: Leveraging Diversity for a Stronger Crew. Austin, TX: Women in Engineering ProActive Network (WEPAN). Retrieved from http://dpubs.libraries.psu.edu/DPubS?service=Repository&version=1.0&verb=Disseminate&handle=psu.wepan/1302008445&view=body&content-type=pdf_1# |
Between 2006 and 2010, the percentage of women in the College of Engineering rose from 27.7% to 33.4% at Cornell University and the graduation rate for women from the College of Engineering increased from 75.5% to 82.6%. The key areas of focus for the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation at Cornell University included summer research programs, a scholars community for engineering students, and a series of recruitment initiatives and events.
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Xayarath Hernandez, S. (2011). Broadening Participation in STEM Programs through LSAMP. Conference Presentation at WEPAN 2011 National Conference Advancing Women: Transforming Engineering Education. Seattle, WA: Women in Engineering ProActive Network (WEPAN). Retrieved from http://ocs.sfu.ca/wepan/index.php/wepan2011/wepan2011/paper/view/202/84 |
Five years after introducing three key recruitment and retention strategies, women now make up around 42% of Harvey Mudd College's computer science program. In this Google Tech Talk video, Christine Alvarado shares the three practices Harvey Mudd College implemented to increase the number of women in their CS program: 1) new curriculum for CS1, 2) scholarship trips for female freshman to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computer Science, and 3) hands-on research projects for female sophomore CS students.
Watch Christine Alvarado's Google Tech Talk video on YouTube.
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Alvarado, C. (2011, March 8). Women in CS @ HMC: Three Promising Practices. Retrieved from Google TechTalk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF_Gkxqf158&lr=1&uid=t84aUC9OG6di8kSdKzEHTQ |
