Study Finds Increasing Women Engineers Depends on School, Peer Support

Comprising a majority of the U.S. workforce, women make up only 8.5 percent of the nation's engineers. A number of programs have been launched over the past decade to recruit more women into the field, and while women now represent 20 percent of all engineering students, women remain more likely than men to switch out of the field, particularly in the first two years of college, concludes a recently released study.

The Women's Experiences in College Engineering (WECE) Project reveals female engineering students are most encouraged by a support network of peers, faculty and advisors, when it comes to pursuing a degree in their field. Funded by the National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the study results suggest efforts to improve female students' self-confidence and to strengthen the school's support climate positively affect whether women persist in obtaining engineering degrees and entering the workforce as engineers.

A three-year study, the WECE Project surveyed as many as 25,000 women across 53 colleges and universities to better understand the experiences of women engineering students, their persistence in the field, and participation in formal Women In Engineering (WIE) support activities. The project is the first cross-institutional, longitudinal examination of undergraduate women's experiences and retention or persistence in engineering majors programs. WECE participants completed a 220-question online survey as part of the project.

Among the findings, almost 75 percent of women who identified themselves as stayers during the first year of the study said their peers encouraged them to pursue engineering. Nearly 60 percent of stayers said they were encouraged by faculty, and more than 57 percent named advisors. At 64.2 percent, stayers also said environmental factors such as challenge encouraged them to pursue their field.

A majority of female engineering students who self-identified as leavers said time (57 percent) and disappointment with the school's program discouraged them from pursuing engineering. Less than a combined 35 percent of responding leavers said they were discouraged by such people groups as peers, faculty and advisors.

Disappointment with grades, despite two-thirds of leavers having A or B averages in their engineering-related courses in the previous year, was cited as one of the most significant reasons for leaving. Low self-confidence appears again in that female "students compared themselves more negatively to male peers than to female peers in understanding engineering concepts, solving engineering problems, commitment to engineering and confidence in their engineering abilities."

The WECE study offers these conclusions:

• "Pre-college exposure encourages students to pursue an engineering major."
• "Women are most likely to leave engineering majors in their freshman or sophomore years."
• "Women are not leaving engineering because they can't make the grade."
• "Women's self-confidence must be recognized as a major factor in persistence."
• "The climate in college engineering affects whether women persist."
• "Women undergraduates in engineering need community."
• "WIE programs are beneficial, and they are challenging to administer."
• "Schools can benefit from close institutional data keeping and analysis."

The WECE project was conducted by the Goodman Research Group, Inc., a research firm based in Cambridge, MA. A downloadable PDF of the WECE project is available at: http://www.grginc.com/reportsandpubs.html. Color copies of the full project report and the executive summary are separately available for purchase, also.