Transforming Undergraduate Education in Engineering (TUEE) - Phase IV: Enhancing Women Participation and Success in Engineering Programs

American Society For Engineering Education, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

While the percentage of women earning engineering B.S. degrees has increased in the past few decades, the gender gap is still significant, especially among women from underrepresented minority groups. In this project, the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) will address the chronic problem of low female participation and success in the U.S. engineering undergraduate programs. It is important to bring stakeholders together to create a support community of like-minded individuals to share ideas of effective content, pedagogy and institutional practices and ensure all change agents support goals of increasing female participation and success in engineering. This project is the fourth phase of an anticipated five-stage Transforming Undergraduate Education in Engineering (TUEE) initiative by ASEE to bring about engineering education transformation. This project is designed to bring together a group of mostly women engineering faculty, practicing engineers, and other professionals to share their views and observations, and develop a set of action items for the academy and the nation to improve female participation and success in engineering programs. This project will be implemented as a two part-plan with the aim to build consensus and buy-in among stakeholder communities. The first part is a two-day meeting of the planning group of national leaders, comprised of three primary consultants from senior leadership of ASEE women and diversity committees and five additional members, to develop the initial issues to be addressed with a larger group. In the second part, a one-day workshop with approximately 40 participants, primarily women, from a diverse pool of influential advocates, practitioners, and researchers from academia, professional societies and federal agencies. Participants will provide feedback on the culture of engineering education and engineering programs as well as a set of issues and action items on recruiting, retaining and graduating more female students. Findings from Phase IV will be summarized in a widely-disseminated report and also presented at the 2015 ASEE Annual Meeting. An appropriate evaluation plan for the workshop is planned to collect feedback on the workshop process and additional comments on the recommendations for the effort. This project will build on results from an earlier phase of the TUEE initiative focusing on the perspectives of industry, as well as coordinate with anticipated parallel activities that will involve the perspectives of students and of professional societies and selected federal agencies, respectively. ASEE plans to bring together the multiple phases of the TUEE initiative through a culminating activity that will involve a large group of invited stakeholders convened to share the findings for the first four phases of the initiative and to create a set of recommendations and actions to identify the critical components of and to foster transformative changes in the engineering curricula, pedagogy, and educational culture necessary to support the education of diverse engineers over the next decades.