More Like this

1. Nevertheless, she persisted: Women thrive when they experience the joy of doing engineering

   Evans, R. (December 2021, Research in Engineering Education Symposium)

   In this presentation/publication, we focus on reporting the notion of joy as revealed in our data. The women undergraduate student participants find joy in their experience of developing and applying engineering expertise, knowing what and knowing how in response to real, tangible and challenging problems. They find knowing what and how exciting, self-rewarding and self-defining. They begin as outsiders, progress through a series of successes; having always to earn and, in some cases, demand respect. They develop an engineer’s systematic approach culminating with them claiming their identity as an engineer. If we hope to transform our gendered, raced, classed institutions, we need to learn more about women who thrive within those institutions, about the joy of doing engineering that these women experience. 

   more » « less
2. Nevertheless, she persisted:” Women thrive when they experience the joy of doing engineering in a climate for inclusion

   Evans R., Liang J. (December 2021, Research in Engineering Education Symposium & Australian Association for)

   CONTEXT For the last 40 years, the aggregate number of women receiving bachelor’s degrees in engineering in the US has remained stuck at approximately 20%. Research into this “disappointing state of affairs” has established that “the [educational] institutions in which women sought inclusion are themselves gendered, raced and classed” (Borrego, 2011; Riley et al., 2015; Tonso, 2007). PURPOSE Our focus is women students who thrive in undergraduate engineering student project teams. We need to learn more about how they describe becoming an engineer, about how women come to think of themselves as engineers and about how they perform their engineering selves, and how others come to identify them as engineers (Tonso, 2006). METHODS We are guided by a feminist, activist, and interpretive lens. Our multi-case study method, i.e., three semi-structured interviews and photovoice, offers two advantages: 1) the knowledge generated by case studies is concrete and context dependent (Case and Light, 2011); 2) case studies are useful in the heuristic identification of new variables and potential hypotheses (George and Bennett, 2005). ACTUAL OUTCOMES Our preliminary results suggest these women find joy in their experience of developing and applying engineering expertise to real, tangible, and challenging problems. They find knowing-about and knowing-how exciting, self-rewarding and self-defining. Further, these women work to transform the culture or ways of participating in project teams. This transforming not only facilitates knowing-about and knowing-how; but also it creates an environment in which women can claim their expertise, their identity as engineers, and have those expertise and identities affirmed by others. CONCLUSIONS If we aim to transform our gendered, raced, classed institutions, we need to learn more about women who thrive within those institutions. We need to learn more about the joy of doing engineering that these women experience. We also need to learn more about how they create an “integration-and-learning perspective” for themselves (Ely and Thomas, 2001) and a “climate for inclusion” within those project teams (Nishii, 2012), a perspective and climate that fosters the joy of doing engineering. 

   more » « less
3. We Are Thriving: Increasing the Number of Women in Engineering

   Redmond, K.E.; Panther, G.; Asadollahipajouh, M.; Evans, R.; Kulesza, S.; and Liang, G. (June 2022, 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   An ongoing focus of engineering education research is on increasing the number of women in engineering. Previous studies have primarily focused on examining why the number of women enrolled in engineering colleges remains persistent low. In doing so, while we have gained better understanding of the challenges and barriers women encountered and factors that contribute to such negative experiences, it also, as some scholars have pointed out, has cast a deficit frame to such matters. In this study, we take on a positive stand where we focus on women undergraduate students who not only “stay” but also succeed in engineering programs (that is, our definition of thriving) as a way to locate the personal and institutional factors that facilitate such positive outcomes. 

   more » « less
4. A Qualitative Study of Undergraduate Women in Engineering Project Teams

   Liang, Grace J.; Evans, Rick; Asadollahipajouh, Mojdeh; Kulesza, Stacey E.; Glushko Evans, Anna (June 2023, In 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition. 2023)

   One intervention thought to foster women’s interest in engineering is introducing girls to STEM or engineering activities. The argument for this is that an increase in interest early in their lives will lead to more women pursuing a career in engineering. The focus of our research is women who are thriving as undergraduate student leaders in engineering project teams. We employ a multi-case study method that involves a sequence of semi-structured interviews. This paper speaks to the findings derived from the life history interview where participants describe their early lives and pre-college education. Our inductive thematic analysis of the data indicates that: (1) The women’s early familial influences allowed non-gender defined ways of being, doing, and aspiring for trying new things. (2) This re/definition of gender in relation to self is reinforced by their success in school and through their accomplishments in other extracurricular activities. Those activities were not confined or even heavily weighted toward STEM. (3) Not all of the women assumed leadership roles throughout their K-12 schooling. Nevertheless, what is common is that through academic and extracurricular engagements they developed confidence, a “can-do” attitude, and a rejection of viewing failures as defining indicators of their ability or potential. Their self-awareness, their confidence, and their persistence in the face of failure are critical because they later function as counter-narratives in the women’s encounters with sexism and other forms of marginalization when in engineering and their project teams. Finally, there is some evidence to suggest that encouraging young girls to involve themselves in STEM and/or engineering may be counterproductive. By unintentionally “pushing” these young girls into engineering, rather than “allowing them to choose for themselves,” we may be encouraging the adoption of masculinist gendered roles associated with engineering. 

   more » « less
5. A Qualitative Study of Undergraduate Women in Engineering Project Teams

   Liang, G.J.; Evans, R.; Asadollahipajouh, M.; Kulesza, S.E.; Evans, A.G. (June 2023, 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   One intervention thought to foster women’s interest in engineering is introducing girls to STEM or engineering activities. The argument for this is that an increase in interest early in their lives will lead to more women pursuing a career in engineering. The focus of our research is women who are thriving as undergraduate student leaders in engineering project teams. We employ a multi-case study method that involves a sequence of semi-structured interviews. This paper speaks to the findings derived from the life history interview where participants describe their early lives and pre-college education. Our inductive thematic analysis of the data indicates that: (1) The women’s early familial influences allowed non-gender defined ways of being, doing, and aspiring for trying new things. (2) This re/definition of gender in relation to self is reinforced by their success in school and through their accomplishments in other extracurricular activities. Those activities were not confined or even heavily weighted toward STEM. (3) Not all of the women assumed leadership roles throughout their K-12 schooling. Nevertheless, what is common is that through academic and extracurricular engagements they developed confidence, a “can-do” attitude, and a rejection of viewing failures as defining indicators of their ability or potential. Their self-awareness, their confidence, and their persistence in the face of failure are critical because they later function as counter-narratives in the women’s encounters with sexism and other forms of marginalization when in engineering and their project teams. Finally, there is some evidence to suggest that encouraging young girls to involve themselves in STEM and/or engineering may be counterproductive. By unintentionally “pushing” these young girls into engineering, rather than “allowing them to choose for themselves,” we may be encouraging the adoption of masculinist gendered roles associated with engineering. 

   more » « less