Article: Achieving Parity of the Sexes at the Undergraduate Level: A Study of Success
Despite considerable progress, the under-representation of women in engineering is an ongoing issue. At the University of Oklahoma (OU), some people noticed that the School of Industrial Engineering (IE) had achieved and sustained parity of the sexes for a few years, an achievement they accomplished without an infusion of money. With funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF award GSE-0225228), a multi-disciplinary team assembled to study the situation with an eye toward identifying factors that could be adapted by other departments and institutions. This article summarized the three-year research study, synthesizing results from papers that had already been published as well as manuscripts still in progress (some of which have since been published).
Method
Borrowing from Seymour and Hewitt (1997) and Margolis and Fisher (2002) the philosophy that students are the best source for understanding student choices, we interviewed 185 students and 12 faculty members. We started with students majoring in IE at OU and used those interviews to inform the interview protocols used with students majoring in other areas at OU (Project Years 2 and 3) and in IE at other institutions (Project Year 3), as well as faculty in IE at OU. We also interviewed IE majors at OU multiple times during the project years (six students three times and another 20 students twice). Data analysis followed typical strategies for qualitative data (e.g., Leydens, 2004). Senior personnel completed the initial coding of the interview transcripts (using qualitative analysis software NVivo). The process also included having a second coder double-check the initial coding to watch for intra-coder and inter-coder consistency. A portion of PY3 and the no-cost extension year was spent completing fine-grained analysis based on our coding. We also spent time during those two years incorporating triangulation data such as academic transcripts, and interviews with IE faculty, as well as looking intensively at interviews with students in the comparison departments.
Results
The project started with five factor categories: (1) student background and future, (2) attributes of the institution, (3) attributes of the field, (4) attributes of the department, and (5) pedagogy/curricula. We included the first two categories in case there turned out to be some causes of which we were unaware, but both turned out to be most useful as baseline (i.e., neither the students nor the institution was substantially unique). Two categories provided the greatest explanatory power: attributes of the field and attributes of the department. A related third powerful factor emerged: a high number (and proportion) of students relocated into IE from another major. We expected the pedagogy/curricula category to be explanatory (because Seymour & Hewitt, 1997, pointed to this issue as a priority), but students described good and bad teaching across departments, including in IE at OU.
— Attributes of the field that students found attractive fell along two intersecting dimensions: perspectives emphasized in IE (e.g., efficiency, problem-solving, systems-oriented) and the people who are IEs (e.g., people-oriented, status potential, breadth of interests). These aspects appealed both to women and to men, but the literature points to some of these aspects as being disproportionately attractive to women. We believe that most fields have aspects that, if made visible and valued, would appeal to women without turning off men.
— Attributes of the department described by students as unusual included: (1) visibility of women faculty, that is, the women faculty were not just included in the head count, but were clearly valued by the department and interacted with undergraduates; (2) alumni as faculty, which gave these faculty a bond with the students and a higher level of emotional investment in the success and strength of the undergraduate program; (3) the use of personal invitation to attract students to consider majoring in IE; and (4) the use of personal attention so that students felt like part of the department, a valued part, in fact.
— About 46% of the IE-at-OU student sample had started in another major (24/52), most in engineering (20/24). When these students figured out that they did not want to continue in their original major, rather than leaving engineering entirely, they found a happy home in IE.
Recommendations
We recommended that departments consider the following activities:
— make visible the undergraduate degree and the breadth of the discipline (talks and printed media)
— invite incoming freshmen to consider the major
— invite current freshmen to consider the major
— inspire current majors to be emissaries for the field
— value collegiality and make that value visible to students
— value diversity and make that value visible to students
— show passion for the field and the department
— show enthusiasm for working with students and interest in them as people
Acknowledgments
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation’s Gender in Science and Engineering (NSF GSE) program under Grant No. 0225228. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
References
Leydens, J. A., Moskal, B. M., & Pavelich, M. J. (2004). Qualitative Methods Used in the Assessment of Engineering Education. Journal of Engineering Education, 93(1), 65-72.
Margolis, J., & Fisher, A. (2002). Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Seymour, E., & Hewitt, N. M. (1997). Talking About Leaving: Why Undergraduates Leave the Sciences. Oxford: Westview Press.
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