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Study Indicates That Support Activities at Universities “Sense of Community” Essential to Female Undergraduates Studying Engineering CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS—Why do many women drop out of engineering majors? A new, comprehensive study finds that the reason is not lack of academic ability, but a discouraging academic climate and women not feeling part of a larger engineering community. Women who succeed in the major often do so by availing themselves of a variety of support activities and resources during their undergraduate years. So suggests the first large-scale, multi-institutional, longitudinal examination of women’s experiences in college engineering programs, funded by the National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and recently completed by Goodman Research Group, Inc. (GRG). While women make up 56.8 percent of the U.S. workforce, only 8.5 percent of the country’s engineers are female, and women compose only about 20 percent of enrollment in engineering schools. Over the past decade, a number of research studies have sought to understand why. The Women’s Experiences in College Engineering (WECE) project is the first statistical investigation into the institutional and personal factors that help keep women in undergraduate engineering. The three-year study found that participation in support activities is vital to women undergraduates, who need to feel they are part of a larger community in engineering. WECE investigators discovered that women who participated frequently in support activities—particularly social enrichment activities such as guest lectures, field trips, and social events—were more likely to stay in the major. On average, the women who stayed had higher grades in their engineering-related courses than those who left, but two-thirds of those who quit had engineering grade averages of A or B in a previous year, suggesting that many students capable of doing the work were leaving anyway. Even women who were doing well academically were often discouraged by their grades. The study collected data from over 20,000 undergraduate women and from faculty and administrators at 53 post-secondary institutions. About half of these institutions maintained formal Women in Engineering (WIE) programs, which seek to recruit and retain female students by offering a range of academic and social supports such as mentoring, tutoring, skills workshops, career explorations, and social opportunities. Others provided similar supports without benefit of a formal program. “Many colleges have been making efforts for a number of years to keep women in engineering,” said GRG President Irene F. Goodman, Principal Investigator of WECE, “but this is the first study to quantitatively identify and confirm which measures can be most effective in supporting and encouraging talented women, and keeping them in the major.” The study’s report—co-authored by Irene F. Goodman Ed.D., Christine Cunningham Ph.D., and Cathy Lachapelle—outlines a number of specific recommendations for supporting women in undergraduate engineering. Women are most likely to leave engineering majors in their freshman or sophomore years, the study confirmed. With the exception of technical institutes, colleges and universities generally do not accept students into a field-specific engineering major until their junior year, suggesting that support measures are particularly crucial during the early undergraduate years. Students who held positive views of the climate in their department and their classrooms were most likely to stay in engineering. Those who left often cited factors such as workload, competition, and discouraging faculty and peers. The report recommends ways to make the academic climate more welcoming, such as providing academic advisors; requiring fewer “grunt” courses in the first two years; and making room for students to pursue interests outside of engineering. “Some qualitative studies have noted that the “climate” of engineering departments, courses, and schools seems to play a role in women’s persistence. The WECE study permitted us to examine statistically how these factors were related to women’s retention in engineering majors,” said Christine M. Cunningham, Co-Principal Investigator and Project Director of WECE. The WECE study also confirmed previous theories that a woman’s self-confidence was a major factor in whether she persisted in the major. Noting that “a student’s self-confidence increases when she feels that someone believes in her engineering abilities, cares about her, and wants her to be part of a community,” the report urges that engineering programs seek to bolster women’s self-confidence by increasing faculty sensitivity to the issue, among other means. Since pre-college exposure encourages students to pursue an engineering major, the report offers several ways to expose young women to engineering. Suggestions for community building are also included. “Community allows students to build networks and to feel that their presence in engineering is important to others,” the report states. “Networking can counteract the isolation that women experience—providing them with information, support, and the knowledge that they’re not alone in the challenges they face.” Goodman Research Group, Inc., of Cambridge, Massachusetts, provides a wide range of research and evaluation services to education, not-for-profit, corporate, and government clients. Under the leadership of its founder and president, Irene F. Goodman, the firm has carried out over 120 evaluation projects for clients that include AAAS, Harvard University, National Cancer Institute, PBS, Pew Charitable Trusts, Reading Is Fundamental, and University of Nebraska. The executive summary of the project’s final report is available for $10, and the full report (300 pages, including 26 pages of color graphs) is available for $60 from Goodman Research Group, Inc., 30 JFK Street, 3rd Floor, Cambridge, MA 02138. Prices include postage and handling, and all orders must be prepaid. For more information call GRG at (617) 491-7033. A PDF version of the full report is also available on GRG’s web site: www.grginc.com.
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National Engineers Week Foundation
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