Doub McInnis (Photographer). Retrieved from http://www.clarkson.edu/alumni_magazine/winter2012/women_in_engineering.html

Solutions to Attracting More Women to Engineering

Prepared for: Dean Fotouhi

Prepared by: Taylor Heilig

December 11November 22, 2015

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Wayne State University695 Williams MallDetroit, MI 4820212/1111/22/15

Wayne State UniversityCollege of Engineering5050 Anthony Wayne Dr.Detroit, MI 48202

Dear Dean Fotouhi,

This document contains a report concerning the enrollment of women at Wayne State

University’s College of Engineering. This report discusses possible ideas for increasing the

enrollment of women in engineering and evaluates which of these alternatives solutions are most

feasible.

I We have proposed the following possible solutions to attracting more women to Wayne State’s

engineering programsolutions to renew the space:

1. Mentor program2. Engineering program for middle school girls3. Advertising engineering programs as programs attempting societal good.4. Increasing SWE’s (Society of Women in Engineering) impact on women5. Implementing engineering classes focuses on societal good

Complete restoration to original designPartial restorationTransforming the pool into an ornamental grass gardenTransforming the pool into a lawn areaPeriodic cleaning of existing poolReconstruction of concrete plaza with sitting areas

My research methods included interviews with female biomedical engineering students,

questionnaires with females from other engineering majors besides biomedical engineering, and

secondary research from outside sources about the topic.

Thank you for your time in allowing me to research these alternatives. If you have any further

questions, feel free to contact me at fo4580@wayne.edu.

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Sincerely,

Taylor Heilig

Table of Contents

Letter of Transmittal........................................................................................................................1

Executive Summary.........................................................................................................................3

Introduction......................................................................................................................................4

Overview of Possible

Solutions.........................................................................................................4

Criteria…………………………..

……...........................................................................................6..

Research Methods and

Results........................................................................................................6..

o Interviewees……………………………………………………………………………....

.6..

o Interviews Questions………………………………………………………………………

7..

o Secondary Research Methods……………………………………………………………..7

Evaluation of Alternatives Against

Criteria.....................................................................................9..

Conclusion…………………………..

……......................................................................................10

Recommendatio

ns............................................................................................................................11..

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Works

Cited....................................................................................................................................12..

Appendix

I......................................................................................................................................13..

Appendix II....................................................................................................................................15

Executive summary

Nowadays, There have been decades of intervention to mend the engineering gender gap,

yet there are still only 11% of practicing women in engineering“Women comprise more than

20% of engineering school graduates, yet only 11% of practicing engineers are women, despite

decades of academic, federal, and employer interventions to address this gender gap” [1](Fouad,

Singh, Fitzpatrick, & Liu, 2012, p. 1). Currently, Wayne State’s College of Engineering is

ranked “14 among 259 engineering schools in the nation in its percentage of females graduating

with a bachelor's degree” [2](Female Graduation Rate). That is a pretty good ranking but the

college’s female graduation rate is only 30 percent. I have identified several different solutions

that aim to increase women’s interest in engineering. Women tend to think in different ways than

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men; having more women in engineering will allow for more design ideas and more innovation

than what men alone can come up with. Decreasing the gender gap will help improve the

workplace environment on campus and increase efficiency of products made by engineers

promote excellence. The options I investigated include:

1. Mentor program2. Engineering program for middle school girls[3.] Advertising engineering programs as programs attempting societal good.3.[4.] Increasing SWE’s (Society of Women in Engineering) impact on women[5.] Implementing engineering classes that focuses on societal good

These options were researched through interviews with various members of the BMES

amembers and a few other engineers that are not in biomedical engineering. Information about

The estimates for these solutions wasere obtained from several sources including articles posted

by Wayne State, The New York Times, and other various sources. The solutions were evaluated

based on the following criteria:

1. Cost2. Efficiency3. Number of girls/women affected4. Success

I conclude that the first and second options should be implemented by Wayne State’s

College of Engineering. A mentorship program should be put in place to give new female

engineers someone to look up to and help guide them through their academic career. Also, a

mentorship program will not cost very much as long as women in engineering are willing to

volunteer their time. An engineering program at Wayne State for middle school girls will

increase their interest in engineering at a young age. A Also, a mentorship program should be put

in place for the College of Engineering to give new women engineers someone to look up to and

help guide them through their academic career.program for middle school girls will not be one of

the cheapest solutions but it should be one of the more effective solutions to change girls’

attitudes towards engineering; they will learn that engineering isn’t just for boys.

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Introduction

The main purpose of this document is to identify current programs actively trying to

persuade women to go into engineering, and why these programs aren’t working and the

alternatives that can be put in place to improve the enrollment of women engineering studentsfix

the problem. There are very few women in engineering compared to the amount of men. Many

reasons for this have been given; these reasons include, “workplace sexism, lack of female role

models, stereotypes regarding women’s innate technical incompetency, the difficulties of

combining tech careers with motherhood” [3](Nilsson, 2015, p. 1). It is estimated that “women

enrolled in engineering programs at U.S. universities is below 20 percent” [4](Kadado, 2015).

Women need a higher representation in the engineering field. Differing views and ways of

thinking are key to optimal designing of engineering projects. Women often think in different

way than men and therefore, canould shine new light on projects that men might not think of.

Innovation from men and women working together are is key for the best engineering program at

a university and within the workplace.

Addressing this problem will allow women to feel more comfortable in the engineering

field, which will in turn attract more women to Wayne State’s College of Engineering. Table 1

shows that many women never entered engineering simply because they were not interested.

Gaining these women’s attention is key to decreasing the gender gap in engineering. Many

universities have already tried programs, groups, and direct requircruitements to increase the

percentage of women in engineering. If Wayne State achieves success in gender diversity in its

engineering programs, the college will attract the attention of the nation and other universities’,

and even possibly engineering and technology companies’ attention. More attention to the

college of engineering will most likely result in higher enrollment by men and women. This

higher enrollment will allow the college to buy new equipment for its students, run more events,

perform more research, and much more.

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Obtaining women’s interest in engineering is not only important for Wayne State’

College of Engineering but important for engineering companies as well. “Fixing the problem is

not only the right thing to do; it’s an economic imperative” [5](Saujani & O'Kelly, 2015). The

gender gap has created an innovation and socio-economic predicament. Fixing this nding a

solution to this problem will do great things for many engineering companies and their

employees. A diverse set of minds are needed to tackle the problems the society faces, and

without women’s creativity and intelligence it is much harder to conquer these problems.

Overview of alternatives

Solution 1: Mentorship program

A mentorship program within the College of Engineering at Wayne State could help keep

women interested in engineering. The Biomedical Engineering program implements a mentor

program for its freshmen students. A similar mentor program for the women in all the

engineering majors could be implemented. This willwould give new women students an older

student to look up to and be guided by. This could help lessen the stress of some women of

finding other female friends in engineering. This could should help women with self-efficacy,

identity, and adaptability.

Solution 2: Middle school program for girls

Wayne State’s Go-Girl program is one of the first steps taken to encourage younger girls

into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). “Girls lose interest in STEM

related fields around middle school, and they are often encouraged into other fields” [6](GO-

GIRL). This type of program is very crucial to the College of Engineering because if girls are not

introduced to engineering at a younger age, it is quite possible they will not be interested in

engineering when they’re ready for college. To achieve its mission, Go-Girl assigns mentors to

the middle school girls and perform activities in the many different fields within STEM. The

program also promotes confidence networking experiences, and possibly lifelong friends.

Solution 3: Advertising engineering programs as programs attempting societal good

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It is known that women are often attracted to fields that help people. It is found that

“women seem to be drawn to engineering projects that attempt to achieve societal good” [3]

(Nilsson, 2015). Table 21 in the appendix shows that many women left engineering because they

either lost interest or just didn’t like their tasks in general. Engineering isn’t usually advertised as

helping people, it is usually displayed as the producing of cars, equipment, and technology.

Many women do not find this aspect of engineering appealing so they automatically shy away

from engineering. However, most engineering fields do help society. Biomedical engineering is

often thought of people who create prosthetics, design medical equipment, and help people.

Which is great but industrial, mechanical, and chemical engineering are often not thought of as

fields that help society. Changing women’s attitudes and thoughts toward the most popular, male

dominated engineering fields will do wonders for the enrollment in these popular programs.

Solution 4: Increasing SWE’s impact

SWE is a great group for women in engineering. It is a group of women that stimulate

other women engineers to reach their full potential as an engineer. This group needs to be more

vocal about its mission, focus on recruiting more women, and even possibly host events for

middle school or high school girls to show these younger students that being a female engineer

can be fun. Also, SWE should host more events for its members and invite other female

engineers to these events. This will show the non-members what it’s like to be a part of SWE and

will hopefully encourage those women to join. SWE is like a big female support group. The

members know how it can be working in a male dominated field so these members can offer

advice to the women who aren’t part of SWE.

Solution 5: Implementing engineering classes that focus on societal good

Classes with an explicit social context and mission will perhaps appeal to women

engineers. Many women have the nature of wanting to help or take care of people. For example,

MIT developed a class that focuses on developing technologies that improve the lives of people

living in poverty. These classes wouldn’twill not be specifically designed for women. These

classes willould give its students an opportunity to work on technical engineering projects with a

strong purpose. This kind of classes will give many women the kind of projects they want to

work on: projects that effect society.

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Criteria

The criteria used to evaluate these possible alternatives include:

cCost , eEfficiency, n N umber of girls and women affected S , and the success.

Cost is an important factor to think about because if the alternative requires too much

funding, the funding will run out and the alternative will not be able to continue until more

funding is received. Next, efficiency and the amounts of women affected are important for these

alternatives because if they proposed alternatives do not change the amount of women going into

engineering then the alternative will not be considered successful. Lastly, success is important

especially since the success fixing the gender gap in engineering at Wayne State will improve its

reputation.

Research Methods and Results

To compile this report, I performed interviews with current women biomedical engineers,

questionnaires with other female engineers, and performed secondary research about the topic.

Interviews with female BMES Members

I performed two interviews with female members of BMES (Biomedical Engineering

Society) and had a few other female engineers in various programs at Wayne State fill out a

questionnaire to gain understanding and background of the project. As a female engineer, I can

see why some women might be intimidated by engineering. The purpose of these interviews was

to understand why women stay in engineering and to find ways to get more women to join

engineering. The interviews allowed me to understand why some women might be put off by the

idea of joining engineering, but also gave me insight on why women stay in engineering. I

specifically chose to interview two females in BMES because this engineering field has the most

women in it. This means that biomedical engineering is doing something right that other

engineering major are not. After inquiring about why women join engineering, how they got

interested, if the male dominated field was intimidating, and what can be done to make women

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feel more comfortable, I was able to understand and perform research about these topics. From

these interviews, I learned that women like to work on projects that have a direct impact on

society and engineering isn’t usually represented as that; when most people think of engineering

it’s usually about automotive and technological gadgets.

Those interviewed include:

1. Jennifer Ferrari who isi: biomedical engineering student and class of 2018 class

representative for BMES and

2 Isha Kulkarni biomedical engineering student; member of BMES.

The transcript of these two interviews can be found in the appendix. My interview

questions were designed to fully understand why each womenwoman decided to go into

engineering, what they like and dislike about engineering, and what they think can be improved

for future female engineers. My interview consisted of six questions about the topics listed

above.

1. What made you decide to go into engineering?2. Do you find the percentage of men to women in engineering daunting?[3.] What do you think willould make more women want to go into engineering?3.[4.] Have you considered dropping out of engineer? If so, why?4.[5.] What aspects of engineering do you think women like the most?5.[6.] Best way to interest women in engineering?

Secondary Research Methods

For my secondary research, I found many sources about women in engineering and

attempts to attract more women to the field. These different sources analyzed different reasons of

why women left engineering, why they never entered engineering, and different programs to

attract more women to engineering. Nilsson’s article offered information about classes aimed at

achieving societal good. I considered qualitative research by Fouad, Singh, Fitzpatrick, and Liu

it is most suited to efforts to understand the reasoning of women that leaving or never enter

engineering. Individual and contextual factors that distinguish women who persist in engineering

careers in the US were identified and explained by Bilimoria, Buse, Perelli. Saujani’s and

O'Kelly’s article discussed how a mentorship program has a critical affect and that recruiting can

play a large part in attracting women to engineering. GO-GIRL gave me information about a

current program for middle school girls to interest them in STEM programs that can easily be

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manipulated to concentrate on just engineering programs. Kadado explain SWE’s current actions

and efforts on trying to diminish the engineering gender gap. Lastly, Female Graduation Rate

from Wayne State’s website allowed by to understand where Wayne State stands with female

engineer graduation and to decide whether or not a solution needs to be made to decrease the

gender gap in engineering. All these sources helped me come up some of these solutions and also

guided me on my evaluations of these solutions.

Evaluation of Solutions

Evaluation of Mentor Program

Alternative one is the mentor program. This program wouldn’twill not necessarily

require funding as long as current female engineers volunteered some of their time to mentor a

younger female engineer. As shown in Figure 1 in the appendix, self efficacyself-efficacy,

adaptability, and identity are important personal factors that affect women’s decisions to do

engineering. A mentor program will help women build strong adaptability, identity, and self

efficacyself-efficacy which is crucial to keeping women in engineering. If women are willing to

volunteer and participate in this solution, it can be very affective in keeping women in

engineering and even attract new women. It’s a very simple and effective solution as long as

there are enough women to run the program and to participate in it.

Evaluation of an engineering program for middle school girls

The second alternative is an engineering program for middle school girls. Wayne State

already has a program like this for STEM programs. So implementing this kind of program will

not be hard, but the cost could be troublesome. A cost analysis and a budget will have to be

created to make sure the program can function without any financial issues. Many girls will be

affected by this program. Implementing a summer and winter program will optimally affect the

most middle school girls. Together, Wayne State’s chapter of SWE and the College of

Engineering could possibly set up a program for middle school girls as they have already hosted

an engineering program to mentor female youth.

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Evaluation of advertising engineering programs as programs attempting societal good

Thirdly, advertising engineering programs as programs attempting societal good. This

can easily be done by coming up with new descriptions of all the engineering majors. These new

descriptions can be printed on pamphlets, put on their respective Wayne State website, put on

their social media pages, and even be written about in Wayne State’s newspaper. Virtually, this

will have very little cost, but, their effectiveness is not guaranteed to be high unless spread

further from Wayne State. Wayne State can invest in putting ads about its engineering programs

on billboards will the new descriptions of the programs. This alternative can only work so well if

there are enough girls that even a little bit interested to find out what the engineering problems

have to offer and if enough money is invested in advertising. This can be a very successful

solution if it is advertised well.

Evaluation of Increasing SWE’s Impact

Alternative four focuses on increasing SWE’s (Society of Women in Engineering) impact

on women. If SWE can solely focus on recruiting more female engineers, a lot more women will

would feel more comfortable in engineering. SWE encourages leadership, diversity, and shows

that engineering can be a positive force in life. The women that join SWE will find a positive

reinforcement for being in engineering and will most likely stay in engineer rather than a female

who is not part of SWE. This solution will require some sum of money to host events to attract

new members. However, if enough time and money is invested, SWE can really make a

significant impact on the amount of girls affected.

Evaluation of implementing engineering classes that focuses on societal good

The final alternative is implementing engineering classes that focuses on societal good.

This is one of the harder alternatives to put in place. It will take much time to get approval of

new classes, create the curriculum, and find people to teach the classes. This option will be time

consuming and costly, but it has been proven to be effective. U.C. Berkeley offered a new Ph.D.

minor that dealt with solutions for low-income communities. Within the first year, half the

student enrolled were women. Dozens of universities have programs aimed to reduce global

poverty, inequality, and other issues and these universities have seemn similar results to

Berkeley. This alternative willould definite help reduce the gender gap at Wayne State but it is

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not the most realistic alternative to pursue at this time, as it will take much time to accomplish

and for it to show success.

Conclusions

It has been shown that, “women who persisted in engineering careers articulated high

levels of self efficacyself-efficacy…and were motivated by the challenges and novelty of the

profession” [7](Bilimoria, Buse, Perelli, p. 139) . All these programs will see to the success of

women in engineering, and hopefully all will be implemented in time and will have high success

rates. However, all are not feasible for a short term achievement in mind. Creating engineering

classes that have a strong purpose for the world will take much time because the class or classes

will have to be designed, the curriculum needs to be picked out and approved, and a teacher

needs to be found to fill these teaching positions. Also, increasing SWE’s success will also take

time since the group has limited time and money. A mentor program and an engineering program

also faces difficulties in organization, management, and funding.

Recommendations

The best long term solution to bringing more women in engineering is to change the

stereotype of how nerdy engineering is to young girls. Improving programs like Go-Girls will

help achieve this, but having a program for younger girls specifically for engineering willould be

best. Instilling confidence in young girls that they can be an engineer when they grow up and

changing young girls’ opinions will drastically increase the enrollment of female engineers.

Also, a mentor program should be implemented in the College of Engineering to help any female

engineer and ones that will be enrolling in the future. Mentorship will help ease the discomfort of

these females from the male dominated field along with instilling friendship.

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Works Cited

Bilimoria , D., [7] Buse, K., Perelli, S. (n.d.). ERIC - Why They Stay: Women Persisting in US

Engineering Careers, Career Development International, 2013. Retrieved November 23,

2015, from http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1004090

14

Female Graduation Rate. (n.d.). Retrieved November 14, 2015, from

http://www.eng.wayne.edu/news.php?id=1458

[1] Fouad, N., Singh, R., Fitzpatrick, M., & Liu, J. (2012). Stemming the Tide: Why Women

Leave Engineering. Retrieved November 6, 2015, from

http://www.studyofwork.com/files/2011/03/NSF_Women-Full-Report-0314.pdf

[6] GO-GIRL - GO-GIRL Experience. (n.d.). Retrieved November 13, 2015, from

http://gogirls.wayne.edu/about/experience.php

[4] Kadado, C. (2015, April 1). WSU hosts engineering program to mentor female youth.

Retrieved November 13, 2015, from d829-11e4-bc87-5b63a6813b20.html

http://www.thesouthend.wayne.edu/news/article_03055d30- d829-11e4-bc87-

5b63a6813b20.html

[2] Female Graduation Rate. (n.d.). Retrieved November 14, 2015, from

http://www.eng.wayne.edu/news.php?id=1458

[6] GO-GIRL - GO-GIRL Experience. (n.d.). Retrieved November 13, 2015, from

http://gogirls.wayne.edu/about/experience.php

[3] Nilsson, L. (2015, April 26). How to Attract Female Engineers. Retrieved November 12,

2015, from http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/opinion/how-to-attract-female-engineers.html

[1] Fouad, N., Singh, R., Fitzpatrick, M., & Liu, J. (2012). Stemming the Tide: Why Women

Leave Engineering. Retrieved November 6, 2015, from

http://www.studyofwork.com/files/2011/03/NSF_Women-Full-Report-0314.pdf

[5] Saujani, R., & O'Kelly, B. (2015, August 14). Three ways to get more women in tech jobs.

Retrieved November 10, 2015, from http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/14/three-ways-to-get-

more-women-in-tech-jobs-commentary.html

[7] Buse, K. (n.d.). ERIC - Why They Stay: Women Persisting in US Engineering Careers,

Career Development International, 2013. Retrieved November 23, 2015, from

http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1004090

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Appendix 1 1

Transcript of interview with Jennifer Ferrari:

1. What made you decide to go into engineering?

Going into engineering was almost a completely random decision. I like building things

so I thought it could be a good could fit.

2. Do you find the percentage of men to women in engineering daunting?

Most of my classes have a majority of men. It is a little bit daunting but I’m a pretty

social person so I get by just fine. It also helphelps that my program (biomedical

engineering) have a lot of girls in it so I’ve made a lot female friends that way.

3. What do you think willould make more women want to go into engineering?

I personally like that biomedical engineering focuses on projects that help people. I think

that’s the reason why biomedical engineering has so many women in it compared to the

other engineering fields. If the other engineering programs showed how they can help

people too, more females will join those programs.

4. Have you considered dropping out of engineer? If so, why?

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I have considered it because the required courses are very challenging. To graduate in

four years as a biomedical engineering student, a very rigorous course load is required

each year and it is a lot of work.

5. What aspects of engineering do you think women like the most?

Women tend to like to take care of people. So working on projects that they know will

help someone is probably the most important.

6. Best way to interest women in engineering?

Many women think engineering is just about building cars and dealing with computers

but it is so much more than that. I think the best way to interest women in engineering is

to change people’s stereotype of engineering.

Transcript of interview with Isha Kulkarni:

1. What made you decide to go into engineering?

I’m thinking about going to medical school so I thought biomedical engineering

wouldould be a great backup if I did not end up pursing medical school. My program is still

very relatable to medicine, so either way I will be able to help people.

2. Do you find the percentage of men to women in engineering daunting?

There are so many men compared to women in engineering. While I can see that the

amount of men can be daunting to some women, it is not daunting to me. My smaller

BME classes have a lot of girls in them though so it’s a nice change from the big lecture

classes that have a ton of men in them.

3. What do you think willould make more women want to go into engineering?

I think more women will want to go into engineering if engineering didn’t have a

stereotype of being so automotive and technical based. If more women knew that

engineering can help peoplepeople, they will be more inclined to go into engineering.

4. Have you considered dropping out of engineer? If so, why?

Not even once.

5. What aspects of engineering do you think women like the most?

I think women like working on projects that real people can use. In my biomedical

engineering class last yearyear, I had to help design a therapeutic swing for a young girl

with a gene disorder. It felt nice to do something for someone who really needed help.

6. Best way to interest women in engineering?

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Get young girls interested! Put together a program for younger girls that can do different

engineering activities and projects to show them that engineering is fun.

Appendix II

Table 1

1

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Retrieved November 6, 2015, from http://www.studyofwork.com/files/2011/03/NSF_Women-Full-Report-0314.pdf

Table 2

Retrieved November 30, 2015, from http://www.studyofwork.com/files/2011/03/NSF_Women-Full-Report-0314.pdf

19

Figure 1

Retrieved November 23, 2015, from http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1004090