April 1, 1998
MEDIA CONTACTS:
Susan Staffin Metz,
WEPAN
(201) 216-5245
Suzanne G. Brainard,
University of Washington
(206) 543-4810
WHY ARENÏ€T THERE MORE FEMALE ENGINEERS? WEPAN SURVEY SEEKS ANSWERS
HOBOKEN, N.J. ã Forecast: Unpredictable. Is the academic climate at many U.S. engineering schools discouraging women as well as minorities from pursuing careers in the field?
Thatπs a question the Women in Engineering Programs & Advocates Network, WEPAN, hopes to answer with a nationwide survey this spring of 30,000 engineering students at 29 engineering schools. The results are expected to be available in August.
The WEPAN survey was developed by co-investigators Susan Staffin Metz, WEPAN president and director of the Office of Womenπs Programs at Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, and Suzanne G. Brainard, Ph.D., WEPAN immediate past president and director of Women in Engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle. A $75,000 grant from the Engineering Information Foundation, New York, is funding the project.
≥By the year 2000, demographic trends show that 68 percent of the new entrants into the U.S. labor force will be women and minorities,≤ Brainard says. ≥Educational institutions must find ways to increase the number of women and minorities pursuing careers in engineering.≤
The survey will be administered to all female and minority male engineering students at the 29 participating institutions as well as a random sample of non-minority male students enrolled in the schoolsπ engineering programs.
≥This isnπt just a womenπs issue,≤ Metz comments.
≥There is a growing concern about the enrollment and retention of female students, but enrollment for both men and women in our nation's engineering schools is dropping,≤ she says. ≥I believe that one of the major reasons is that the climate in many engineering schools is not a conducive learning environment for men or women.≤
While women make up 46 percent of the total U.S. work force, only 8.5 percent of the countryπs engineers are women. Women average 20 percent of the enrollment in engineering schools.
The gender disparity grows when dropout rates are considered. Approximately 54 to 70 percent of women entering engineering programs donπt graduate (compared to 39 to 61 percent for men). Retention rates are a particular problem in the freshman and sophomore years.
≥Research indicates that the educational experiences of female engineering students can be considerably different from their male counterparts, even when they attend the same institutions and classes,≤ Metz comments. ≥That's something we intend to explore with this survey.≤
Metz and Brainard believe the survey results will help engineering schools, individually and collectively, identify problems and find solutions that ultimately will improve retention rates for both men and women.
Participating students will be asked a range of questions to measure how well their schoolπs academic and social climates are meeting their needs. Among the 39 questions: Is the student comfortable asking questions in the classroom; do classmates compete against each other; and has the studentπs self-confidence in the areas of science, math and overall academics improved since entering college.
The survey is modeled after a five-year climate survey administered to engineering students at the University of Washington and funded by the National Science Foundation.
≥The engineer of the future needs to have strong interpersonal as well as technical skills,≤ Metz says. ≥Schools must adapt their curriculums and teaching methods to accommodate different learning styles ã not just to increase the number of women and minority engineers, but to produce engineers who are better equipped to succeed in a rapidly changing, global market.≤
WEPAN, a non-profit educational organization, was founded in 1990. A 23-member board of directors oversees more than $3.5 million in federal, foundation and corporate grants that support WEPAN initiatives. WEPAN operates three regional centers at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind.; Stevens Institute of Technology; and the University of Washington.
The Engineering Information Foundation was founded in 1934 as a nonprofit organization serving the engineering field. It supports educational and research programs that advance the availability and use of information related to engineering, programs that encourage women to pursue careers in engineering, and projects that improve the access to engineering information at schools in developing countries.
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(Editors: Schools participating in the WEPAN survey include Arizona State University, Tempe; Colorado School of Mines, Golden; Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.; Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H.; Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago; Kansas State University, Manhattan; Michigan Technological University, Houghton; Mississippi State University, Mississippi State; Northeastern University, Boston; Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind.; Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Terre Haute, Ind.; San Jose State University, San Jose, Calif.; Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, N.J.; University of California at Berkeley; University of Colorado, Boulder; University of Idaho, Moscow; University of Illinois at Chicago; University of Iowa, Iowa City; University of Kentucky, Lexington; University of Maryland, College Park; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; University of Minnesota, Duluth; University of Missouri-Columbia; University of Pittsburgh, Penn.; University of Rhode Isl! and, Kingston; University of Tennessee, Knoxville; University of Texas at Austin; University of Washington, Seattle; and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg.)
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