From Our Perspective: Undergraduate And Faculty Women In Electrical And Computer Engineering Programs On Recruitment, Retention, And What Really Works

Women remain significantly under-represented in undergraduate electrical and computer engineering (ECE) degree programs in the U.S.; in recent years, their representation has eroded further. We are a group of women undergraduate students and faculty in ECE at a public university with one of the largest engineering programs in the U.S. In this paper, we present our perspective on why women are under-represented in undergraduate ECE programs: we examine some of the previously cited reasons for women’s persistent under-representation and provide evidence for efforts that have been effective at recruiting and retaining women students in ECE. We elucidate the often-cited “lower self-confidence” issue that remains a significant threat by focusing on fallacies (there’s something wrong with the women; they need to be fixed to have higher self-confidence) and distracting attention from the real problems that are grounded in the typical undergraduate engineering education experience. We describe results that indicate how four factors improved all students’ learning, retention and satisfaction—and dramatically increased women students’ enrollment—in our university’s first-year ECE program.