Resumen

Creating gender equity in engineering education is important for more reasons than simply being a matter of social justice or diversifying the engineering field. It is also a significant educational and public policy issue that will affect the future economic competitiveness of the United States in the global marketplace. Engineering is arguably the leading national example of a profession in which women are under-represented. Undergraduate engineering programs not only need to attract and retain female students, but they must also provide full access to the educational experiences women must have to develop the engineering skills to succeed in the engineering profession.

This study explored whether the shift to the “soft” or less technical skills in engineering encouraged by new accreditation standards could potentially have had differential effects for women in engineering from their male counterparts. In particular, this study examined the proposition that program practices and policies, faculty members’ activities, and the experiences of engineering students in college, affect the learning of female students differently than that of male students. The three engineering skills chosen for this study were students’ development of design skills, group skills, and awareness of societal and global issues. Data for this study came from a nationally representative sample of engineering program graduates who received their degrees in 1994 (n = 5,335) and 2004 (n = 4,158), 1,243 faculty, and 147 program chairs at 39 different institutions. This study relied on secondary analysis of data from the Engineering Change study, which assessed changes in student learning associated with the implementation of the new Engineering Criteria 2000 (EC2000) accreditation standards.

The findings from the current study shed light on the complexity of the processes at work in female and male students’ learning and the importance of creating models that can guide research on both male and female students’ development and change while in college. Changes in program and faculty activities affected both students’ experiences and their learning, and those effects differed by gender. This study also revealed that students’ in- and out-of-class experiences differed significantly in their influence on female and male students’ development of selected engineering abilities. For learning that occurs in engineering programs, and perhaps many other professional and academic fields, gender seems to moderate the effects of programmatic and faculty activities, as well as the influences of students’ undergraduate experiences.

It is important for faculty and administrators to understand the differences in learning by women and men in order to identify the best ways to produce female graduates with the skills needed in the workplace (Baxter Magolda, 1992). More needs to be done in engineering education than just helping women to adapt to a traditionally masculine field (Salminen-Karlsson, 2002). Responding to individual students’ needs at each level of learning can strengthen the overall educational experience in and outside of the classroom (Baxter Magolda, 1992). After identifying gender patterns in development and learning, the significant differences reveal that males and females may need different challenges and support systems to ensure their future skill levels. In particular, faculty members can stress applied skills to positively affect female students’ abilities to problem-solve and design solutions, and also use active learning pedagogies in their classes to encourage female students to develop their group skills. In addition, out-of-class experiences seem to be more influential on female students’ development of all three learning outcomes than male students’ development of those same skills. Thus, engineering programs and faculty members could encourage to get involved in activities outside of the classroom, such as studying abroad and involvement in professional society chapters.

Conversations about national policies shaping student learning in higher education are likely to suffer when researchers and policy makers discount comprehensive research designs and ignore the role of gender in student learning. National policy probably should not overlook differences in the pathways to learning for male and female students. The desire to find the silver bullet that will enhance learning for all students narrows, rather than enriches, actions and policies. If academic and policy decision-making ignores gender differences in students’ experiences and learning outcomes, a true transformation of male-dominated fields will never occur and women’s experiences and levels of learning will not reach their ultimate potential.