Session 11a5
Women in Engineering at North Carolina State University: An Effort in
Recruitment, Retention, and Encouragement
Laura J. Bottomley, Sarah Rajala and Richard Porter
College of Engineering
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC 27695
Abstract - Statistics continue to show that, although women
outperform men in first year engineering programs, they
start out with less confidence in their abilities. The
confidence gap persists and, in fact, deepens as their college
career advances, and women complete engineering
programs at a much lower rate than their male colleagues.
This problem is clearly not due to any lack of ability on the
part of the women. Unfortunately, women still choose to
pursue engineering careers at a much lower rate than men.
The field of engineering can’t afford to lose so many
potentially great contributors. In addition to their raw
skills, women can potentially contribute diversity of
viewpoint -- ever more increasingly recognized as being a
necessary part of team building and problem solving.
This paper describes the approaches we are taking in
the Women in Engineering Program at North Carolina State
University to ensure the success of women students. The
Women in Engineering Program is dedicated to an umbrella
approach to success for all women. The efforts of the
program start at the elementary/middle school level with
school visits designed to encourage girls to view math and
science as fun disciplines for which they have ability and to
continue through high school with more overt recruiting.
Summer and early freshman year experiences are designed
to bridge from high school to college. Mentoring and other
support-oriented programs and career fairs aim to effect a
bridge to post-undergraduate work experiences. Many of
these programs either parallel or are directly connected to
similar efforts aimed at minority engineers.
A universal theme of the Women in Engineering
Program is that programs should be aimed at students and
potential students of all types: minority and non-minority,
male and female. Since the goal is to not only offer support
but to effect a change of attitudes about what makes a good
engineer, many of the programs will aim to put women and
minorities into role model positions.
The Women in Engineering Program is sponsored
through the Office of Academic Affairs in the College of
Engineering.
The Need
Female students make up between 19 and 25% of the
entering class of engineering students each fall. The
proportion of females may vary from year to year, but has
not consistently increased over the course of the last five
years. Since 1995 in the College of Engineering at North
Carolina State University, we have administered the
University of Pittsburgh “Attitude About Engineering”
questionnaire [1] to entering engineering students at the
beginning and end of their first year Introduction to
Engineering Course.
The analysis of these surveys
consistently indicates that female engineering students begin
their college careers less confident in their ability to succeed
in engineering than their male colleagues. This confidence
gap persists and, in fact, deepens over the course of their
early career, even though they take only basic introductory
classes and no disciplinary specific classes.
Female
students’ confidence in physics fell over the course of their
first semester, despite the fact that they do not take a physics
course. Yet the female students’ grade point averages were
generally a full 0.2 higher than their male counterparts. [2,3]
As the students’ academic careers continue, women
leave the College and the University at a higher rate than
men, as well. A study of the same 1996 class of entering
students shows that, as of spring 1999, approximately 20%
of the female students were enrolled in another college and
21% had left the university. The corresponding figures for
male students are 12% enrolled in another college and 18%
left the university. [3] These numbers would seem to
indicate that the experience for female students, who enter
the university equally or better qualified than their male
colleagues, must somehow differ from that of the males.
(The results at NC State are quite consistent with those at
other engineering institutions across the country. [4])
Focus groups have been conducted with entering female
students in January 1997 [2] and 1998 to try to assess the
needs of this group of students and plan a program of
support and encouragement to meet those perceived needs.
Few (24) women attended the meetings, which were
announced in class and broadcast via email. Of those in
attendance, none specified a need for any support programs
directed at women. They specifically noted that they didn’t
want to be singled out, and that the ratio of male to female
students was not something that they noticed. However,
when asked whether they thought that engineering was more
difficult for their male peers than them, they uniformly said
that it was. They indicated that the male students didn’t
0-7803-5643-8/99/$10.00 © 1999 IEEE
November 10 - 13, 1999 San Juan, Puerto Rico
29th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
11a5-1
Session 11a5
have to study with the frequency or intensity that the female
students did. Subsequent to the focus group meeting in
1998, several young women approached the Coordinator of
Women in Engineering (who was not in place for the 1997
meeting) and related stories of discrimination or harassment.
Another precollege program sponsored by Women in
Engineering involves tutoring at local elementary schools.
Female and male engineering students travel on a weekly
K-12
Outreach
The Program
All of the data outlined above point to a need for a program
associated with women in engineering, but they also point
out the difficulties involved in causing such a program to be
successful. The program must not show female students in a
disadvantaged role, or students will not participate. Trust
appears to be an issue. We should not attempt to “help”
anyone who doesn’t want to be “helped,” so participation is
to be strictly voluntary. The program must not end at the
entry level, and it must not start there. Indeed, research
indicates that support and encouragement at the college level
will not be sufficient to address the deficit of women in
engineering without the addition of significant outreach
efforts to students K-12.
The Women in Engineering Program at North Carolina
State University attempts to address as many of these
challenges as possible. Initiated in the fall of 1997, the
Women in Engineering Program is dedicated to an umbrella
approach to success for all women. The efforts of the
program start at the elementary/middle school level with
school visits designed to encourage girls to view math and
science as fun disciplines for which they have ability and to
continue through high school with more overt recruiting.
Summer and early freshman year experiences are designed
to bridge from high school to college. Mentoring and other
support-oriented programs and career fairs aim to effect a
bridge to post-undergraduate work experiences (see figure
1). Many of these programs either parallel or are directly
connected to similar efforts aimed at minority engineers.
Precollege
Engineering Outreach Teams [5] composed of both faculty
and students make regular visits to K-12 institutions around
the state of North Carolina. These teams take with them
hands on activities to use interactively with the younger
students they are visiting. The teams have a variety of
purposes. They teach K-12 students about the fields of
engineering and demonstrate that engineering can be fun.
Also, since the teams are composed heavily of minorities
and women, they model for the younger students what an
“engineer” looks and acts like, which is of course different
from what has come to be the standard view. The teams also
contribute to on-campus events involving visitations K-12
students.
Other
Support
Peer
Mentors
Email
Mentors
Assessment
and
Tracking
Figure 1. The Women in Engineering Program,
start to finish
basis to two local elementary schools to tutor students in
math and science. They work with a broad spectrum of K-5
students, some of whom are advanced beyond their grade
level and some of whom are below. This program places
engineering students in leadership positions, which can have
positive effects on their self-confidence and on their selfimage. The schools are overwhelmingly positive in their
feedback to the NC State students.
Undergraduate Programs
The programs aimed at undergraduates are primarily
designed to encourage and support female engineering
students. These programs include peer mentoring, email
industrial mentoring and a Parents’ Weekend activity for
students and their parents.
The peer mentoring program started in the fall of 1998
with 130 voluntary participants. All but ten mentoring
relationships are one-on-one, and matches are made
according to discipline, interests and future plans. Pairs are
suggested to communicate at least once a week with face to
face contact at least twice a month. The program is assessed
each semester, and participants given the opportunity to
continue, be reassigned or exit gracefully. The majority of
the mentees are first year students, while the mentors are
spread across sophomores, juniors and seniors.
The email mentoring program was pilot tested with five
mentoring pairs in the spring of 1998 and will soon begin
again at full scale. To date, ten large companies have
indicated an interest in participating.
Mentors are
0-7803-5643-8/99/$10.00 © 1999 IEEE
November 10 - 13, 1999 San Juan, Puerto Rico
29th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
11a5-2
Session 11a5
encouraged to communicate weekly via email with their
mentees. During the pilot program, several of the local
mentors invited their mentees to visit them at work. Because
of the large industry interest, this program will be
immediately open to female and male students.
In order to address a perceived need for increased
parental support for female engineering students, a seminar
is held each November during Parents’ Weekend for
students and parents. During the seminar, parents hear from
College of Engineering faculty and then from a panel of
female engineering students. The students are instructed to
speak on their experiences either as an engineering student
or as a female engineering student or both. They are then
asked to give advice to the parents in attendance about how
to support their daughters. Attendance at the seminar for the
past two years has been between 30 and 40, and feedback
has been overwhelmingly positive.
Assessment
The various aspects of the Women in Engineering program
are, in most cases, still in their early days of implementation,
but an assessment plan is being developed. Assessment of
the various programs which involve registration (e.g. peer
mentoring, email mentoring, etc.) will include evaluating the
academic performance (overall GPA and specific grades in
key classes) of participants versus non-participating females
and males. In the case of peer mentoring, these evaluations
will be done for mentors and mentees separately. The
hypothesis is that acting in an engineering leadership role
may enhance performance.
Each individual program is assessed via survey at
critical points, at least once a year. The peer mentoring
program has undergone one assessment survey. Participants
were asked to rate their overall satisfaction with the program
on a scale of 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest). Participants were
asked to fill out the survey individually, rather than through
a broadcast mailing, to increase response rate. The average
satisfaction rating for the one semester that the program has
been operating was a 3.75. The reasons given for any lack
of satisfaction included not having enough time to meet with
a mentor/mentee and not enough program sponsored events.
All comments will be taken into account for next year’s
program.
The Women in Engineering Program will be assessed
overall by tracking the following:
•
•
•
•
overall performance of female students versus male
students
(Note that retention rate alone is not a sufficient measure of
success. We will also track the rate of transfer out of
engineering versus tenure in the program, the hypothesis
being that early transfers are better than late. Some students
will need to transfer at some point.)
Conclusion
Although a single program cannot hope to serve every
female student within the College of Engineering as she may
require, the umbrella approach to recruitment, support and
encouragement favored by the Women in Engineering
Program at NC State aims to maximize success for all
students. With the help of the faculty and staff of the
College, success seems assured.
References
[1]
Besterfield-Sacre, Mary E. and Atman, Cynthia J.,
“Survey
Design
Methodology:
Measuring
Freshman Attitudes About Engineering,” ASEE
1994 Annual Conference Proceedings, Edmonton,
Alberta, June 26-29, 1994.
[2]
Fuller, Hugh, et. al.., “Attitude About Engineering
Survey, Fall 1995 and 1996:
A Study of
Confidence by Gender,” ASEE 1997 Annual
Conference Proceedings, , June 1997.
[3]
Fuller, Hugh, Internal Memoranda, 1998.
[4]
Fraser, Jane and Ismail, Dina, “Analysis of Men
and Women Engineering Students at Ohio State,”
ASEE 1997 Annual Conference Proceedings, ,June
1997.
[5]
Bottomley, Laura, Rajala, Sarah and Richard
Porter, “Engineering Outreach Teams: K-12
Outreach at North Carolina State University,”
Frontiers in Education Conference Proceedings,
San Juan, July 1999.
number of students participating in some aspect of the
program
overall retention rate for female students
overall entry rate of female students
0-7803-5643-8/99/$10.00 © 1999 IEEE
November 10 - 13, 1999 San Juan, Puerto Rico
29th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
11a5-3