Article: Leaving Engineering: Lessons from Rowan University’s College of Engineering
The paper starts from the premise that women traditionally have been less likely to be retained in an undergraduate engineering program and to complete their undergraduate engineering degree (Adelman, 1998). Women in engineering programs have sought to reduce this gender gap in retention and completion, with some success but also with some marginalizing (Campbell and Hoey, 2003). An alternative approach is to incorporate female-friendly features into the general engineering program, which is what Rowan University’s relatively new engineering program has done. Designed as best practices in engineering program (not just for women), it offers a natural setting to determine whether such a program is actually female friendly in terms of reducing the gender gap in retention and completion.
The data used to address this question draw on retention data from the University; official GPA; and survey data from a larger study of Rowan’s engineering students (Hartman & Hartman, 2004) which included information on family and academic background, engineering self-confidence, perception of problems for men and women pursuing careers in science, math and engineering, expectations from an engineering job, commitment to the major and career, satisfaction with the Rowan program at two time points—early Fall and late Spring. All Rowan engineering students were surveyed in required classes, ensuring a good cross-section of participants. Information on students who stayed in the program (stayers) is compared to students who left the program (leavers). Factor analysis is employed to develop indices from multiple indicators, and responses are compared between male and female stayers and leavers.
In terms of retention rates, we found that whether we looked at first-year, second-year, third or fourth year retention, or at 4-, 5-, or 6-year graduation rates, there were either no significant gender differences or females had higher retention than males.
How leavers did not differ from stayers was as important as how they did differ. When comparing stayers to leavers, we found no significant differences in their engineering major, with the exception of a non-specific general major that more leavers had but which has subsequently been dropped from the program. In terms of background characteristics, leavers did not come from different family backgrounds, had similar numbers of AP math and science courses and high school extra-curricular science & math activities, and had similar support from friends and family for their pursuit of engineering. At Rowan, leavers had as much confidence as stayers in their engineering skills, overall academic ability and communication skills. They were as satisfied with interdisciplinary core course “engineering clinic”, the emphasis on teamwork, the extensive lab work, and the faculty-student and peer relationships. That is, these were not their motive for leaving. Leavers and stayers had similar expectations about the characteristics of jobs they could get with an engineering degree. Leavers did differ from stayers in that they tended to have lower high school math and science grades, and they also had higher verbal SAT scores (suggesting a strength that might serve them well in an alternate field). At Rowan, leavers were less involved in academic enrichment activities outside of class, less involved in counseling and mentoring activities, and less involved in study activities. They had less engineering self-confidence.
Gender comparisons yielded interesting results: it was male leavers who had poorer pre-college backgrounds in math and science, coupled with higher verbal SAT scores compared to male stayers; female leavers had both higher verbal AND math SAT scores than female stayers. At Rowan, male leavers were less involved in extra-curricular engineering and non-engineering activities; female leavers were less involved in some extra-curricular engineering activities but more involved in others, like study groups. They also were more active in non-engineering extra-curricular activities at Rowan than were female stayers. They are active–but not necessarily in engineering.
Male leavers had lower engineering self-confidence than stayers, and their engineering self-confidence decreased considerably from the fall to the spring semester. Female leavers also had lower engineering self-confidence than female stayers, but female leavers actually had higher engineering grades than female stayers, so this was not the root of their lack of confidence that they belonged in engineering. Male leavers were less satisfied with faculty-student relationships in engineering than male stayers, but this was not true for female leavers when compared with female stayers. Female leavers, however, were less satisfied with program opportunities than were female stayers, but male leavers were not different from male stayers in this respect. Finally, female leavers had lower expectations about the personal freedom they would have with an engineering job, and related to this, they perceived more problems than did female stayers, for women in science and engineering to combine career and family roles.
We reached several conclusions from these results: first, an engineering program like Rowan’s, which incorporates female friendly or inclusive features–even if they are not targeted specifically at women in engineering–seems to reduce the traditional gender differences in undergraduate retention in engineering. Importantly, these female-friendly features appear to be friendly to males as well–that is, men are not leaving the program because they don’t like these features. The males who leave the program tend to be less prepared and less successful academically in engineering; they also have greater verbal strengths, which suggests a possibility of a pull in another direction. The difference in involvement in engineering enrichment, counseling and study activities among leavers suggests that extra-curricular involvement may mitigate against leaving engineering, especially for males. And the fact that female leavers were more concerned about the personal freedoms an engineering job would allow, and perceived more problems for women in engineering in terms of combining career and family, suggests a direction which might enhance female retention in engineering.
Comparison to programs with similar or different features to test the conclusions would be extremely useful, as would a follow-up to determine where students who leave engineering go, and why.
The authors acknowledge the support of the National Science Foundation (Grant #HRD-0074857): Rowan University’s Colleges of Engineering and Liberal Arts and Sciences; the Department of Sociology; and especially the engineering faculty’s cooperation in allowing surveys to be administered during class time.
Adelman, C. (1998). Women and Men of the Engineering Path: A Model for Analyses of Undergraduate Careers. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education.
Campbell, P. & Hoey, L. (2003). Equity Means All: Rethinking the Role of Special Programs in Science and Math Education. Madison, Wisc: National Institute for Science Education.
Hartman, H. & Hartman, M. (2004). A Gender Lens on Rowan University’s College of Engineering. Final Report to NSF. Rowan University (available online at http://users.rowan.edu/~hartman).
Author 1: Harriet Hartman [email protected]
Author 2: Moshe Hartman [email protected]
Article Link: www.asee.org