What's It Like For The Women? Acceptance, Inclusion, And Equity In Predominately Male Technical Programs

Efforts continue at our nation’s colleges to recruit and retain an increasingly diverse student population. While overall enrollment is now more than 50% female, enrollment of women in electronics and other technical programs is still very small. What is it like for the female students who find themselves enrolled in programs where both the student body and faculty are predominantly male? This paper will present recent quantitative and qualitative research on female student perceptions of acceptance, inclusion, and equity at their institutions. The findings that will be shared reveal both positive factors and areas of ongoing challenge for both the women and their institutions. The reported perceptions are clearly useful to both faculty and administration as they endeavor to meet the needs of this segment of the student body. In an effort to understand what their female students experience, surveys and focus groups were conducted in 1999, 2000, and 2001 at the North Brunswick New Jersey and Long Beach California campuses of DeVry Institute of Technology. The overall female enrollment at the Institutes is now approaching 25%. This represents an increase of approximately 6% in the past few years. Within the electronics program, however, the number is less than 10%. Women frequently find themselves enrolled in classes where there are 3 or fewer other women in a group of approximately 40 students. Women enrolling in these programs enter with GPAs and entrance exam scores equivalent to their male peers. The impetus for the research was whether or not they perceived that they were treated as equals once they were enrolled. Did they find themselves accepted by their male counterparts? Did they perceive that faculty members had the same expectations of success for them? Socially, did they feel comfortable? Did they perceive that they were subject to gender discrimination or sexual harassment? Did they have educational needs that were at variance with those of the male students? Could information be obtained that could be used for the basis of improvement of services? The initial surveying was done using the Student Satisfaction Inventory (SSI) with several campus items tailored to capture gender equity data. The sample included a carefully stratified representative sample of approximately 50% of enrolled students. Focus groups were conducted with female students from an array of technical majors and whose length of enrollment varied from first to final year. A follow-up gender survey sampled the perceptions and experiences of successful senior level students. The information gained through these processes revealed areas in which to fruitfully fine-tune delivery of services and design gender specific support programs. Page 7.314.1 “Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2002, American Society for Engineering Education” Results obtained varied greatly depending upon the method of data collection. SSI surveying at the Long Beach campus revealed female perceptions of equity to generally be on a par with, or even exceed, those of males. However, female perceptions of quality of instruction, access to resources and helpfulness of support staff were less favorable than those of the males. In marked contrast, the focus groups conducted at Long Beach and North Brunswick campuses tended to attract participants whose perceptions of equity were less positive than those found in the significantly larger subject sample utilized with the SSI. Focus group sampling techniques may have resulted in a biased sample. However, the information obtained from the focus group sessions allows detailed insight into the experiences of this group of self-selected students. The focus groups and gender inclusion survey allowed the collection of rich qualitative data, which can be used as a conceptual basis for developing enhanced support services and clarifying areas where inclusion might be an issue. The gender inclusion survey yielded a mixture of perceptions highlighting both experiences of inclusion and marginalization. The paper will provide insight in three areas. The first will be the clarification of the differences between male and female college students as evidenced by the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) data, which in 2001 included more than 261,000 respondents. The second, as outlined above, will be knowledge of specific methods and findings regarding equity perceptions of currently enrolled females within DeVry Institutes’ technical programs. The third will be application level insight where the authors will share their own program improvement options.