Gender Differences in the Social Responsibility Attitudes of Engineering Students and How They Change Over Time

Canney, Nathan E.; Bielefeldt, Angela R.

doi:10.1615/jwomenminorscieneng.2015011109

Cited by 46 publications

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“…Wang and Degol (2013) identified characteristics such as intellectual aptitude, academic performance, future aspirations, courses taken, and engagement in STEM activities as predictors of career choice for women in STEM, as well as work-family balance and occupational preference. Related to occupational preference, women are less likely to report identifying with the tech profession (Wang and Degol 2013;Wynn and Correll 2017) and are more likely to report a higher interest in working in jobs that benefit people and society than men who report greater interest in working with objects, which tends to be more in line with STEM careers (Canney and Bielefeldt 2015;Wang and Degol 2013). Overall, women are found to place higher value on careers that help people, a finding consistent with the greater representation of women in engineering fields and careers that tend to have a higher social component, such as biomedical, environmental, and civil engineering (Canney and Bielefeldt 2015).…”

Section: Career Persistence For Women In Stemmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Girl Power”: Gendered Academic and Workplace Experiences of College Women in Engineering

Smith

Gayles

2018

Social Sciences

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Women in engineering continue to experience bias in the field. This constructivist case study uses feminist theory to examine the gendered experiences of graduating senior women engineering students in academic and workplace environments. In each setting we identified three subthemes; in academia: "I don't think my education is any different," "Being underestimated constantly," and "You don't want to be seen as getting advantages"; in the workplace: "Oh, you're a girl," "There's a lot of sexism," and Benefits of "girl power." Overall, findings indicate that women experience bias in both settings, often via implicit bias in academia and with instances of implicit bias, sexism, and sexual harassment occurring even more often in the workplace through internship experiences. The article concludes with suggestions for practice, future research, and strategies to create supportive academic and workplace experiences and environments for women engineers.

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Section: Career Persistence For Women In Stemmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Girl Power”: Gendered Academic and Workplace Experiences of College Women in Engineering

Smith

Gayles

2018

Social Sciences

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“…As women are socialized to be more nurturing and compassionate than men [5][11], the initial hypothesis was that groups that were predominantly female would focus more on helping others while the groups that contained more males would develop projects that would be primarily designed with college students in mind.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One study showed that many engineers lack knowledge of social needs and trends [4]. Research has shown that social consciousness in engineering is especially important to female students because the ability to help society is a common reason that females choose engineering [5]. It has also been revealed that females are more likely than males to sacrifice salary in order to serve society [5], [6].…”

Section: Social Consciousnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Research has shown that social consciousness in engineering is especially important to female students because the ability to help society is a common reason that females choose engineering [5]. It has also been revealed that females are more likely than males to sacrifice salary in order to serve society [5], [6]. However, Matusovich found that more women than men felt that engineering values did not align with their sense of self.…”

Section: Social Consciousnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Social Consciousness in Engineering Students: An Analysis of Freshmen Design Project Abstracts

Rucks¹,

Orr²,

Hall³

2016 ASEE Annual Conference &Amp; Exposition Proceedings

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This research paper explores the motivations behind freshmen engineering projects, particularly as they vary by gender composition of the team. All freshmen in the engineering program at Louisiana Tech University must take and pass Engineering Problem Solving III, an engineering design class, before moving on to sophomore engineering classes. Students are instructed to team up in groups of two to five to design and construct a "smart product" using the knowledge gained from their previous Engineering Problem Solving I and II classes. At the end of the quarter, each team must submit a project abstract before presenting their work at the Freshmen Design Expo. This qualitative study looks at these abstracts in an attempt to find a pattern between the gender composition of the group and the motivation behind the product. Eighty-one project abstracts are analyzed, representing 227 students. Several distinct themes emerged from the analysis of the project abstracts. The most common themes were Annoying and Frustrating, Efficiency and Time Saving, Safety, Elderly and Disabled, Health and Sanitation, Forgetfulness, and Children. Analysis of how these themes map to gender composition of design teams is ongoing. These themes will help to understand how students view the impact that they can have as future engineers. Redesigning curricula and analyzing recruitment techniques to encompass particular themes may help to attract and retain more students in engineering. In this study, groups that had an equal number of males and females were more likely to design a socially conscious project than groups that were mostly male or mostly female. IntroductionFreshmen engineering students at Louisiana Tech University take a series of three engineering problem solving courses as part of the Living with the Lab experience [1]. The third course culminates in an open-ended design project. Students spend about five weeks selecting, designing, and building a "smart" product. Throughout the first year, these students have implemented a variety of sensors and actuators using an Arduino microcontroller. Their smart product must sense something about its environment and respond or report based on this input. Students self-select their teams of two to five members (honors sections typically use teams of two). They are guided through brainstorming, production of multiple prototypes, and discussions with instructors and fellow classmates. Their final product is presented to a panel of judges at the Freshmen Design Expo. Before the Expo, student teams are required to submit a brief project description that is distributed to judges and guests. These descriptions are analyzed in this study to identify underlying motivations.

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“…When tied to course learning objectives, as is done with service-learning, service has been shown to increased academic learning, the ability to apply what students learn to 'real world' situations, and to have a positive effect on views of civic and social responsibility [1][2][3] . Furthermore, fostering service engagements in engineering may be a Page 26.1710.2 useful at increasing the attraction and retention of women and underrepresented minorities in the field [4][5][6] .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Volunteerism in Engineering Students and Its Relation to Social Responsibility

Canney¹,

Bielefeldt²

2015 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition Proceedings

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Addressing how engineering students view their role in society, their social responsibility, is seen as a central aspect toward creating holistic engineers who are able to address complex social issues. The Professional Social Responsibility Development Model (PSRDM) provides a framework for social responsibility development in engineers. Included in this model is a cycle where feelings of professional obligation to help others are enhanced through engaging in service. This study set out to characterize volunteerism among engineering students and to attempted to relate community service activities with views of social responsibility.Data for this study were collected through the Engineering Professional Responsibility Assessment (EPRA) which was developed to operationalize the PSRDM. The survey was distributed to undergraduate engineering students at 17 universities in the spring of 2014. Over 1880 undergraduate students from a diversity of majors and academic ranks completed the survey, including Likert-type items measuring their views of social responsibility and detailing their previous volunteer histories by both activity and frequency. Students reported their level of participation in 17 different volunteer or community service activities during college, or could write-in their own activity. The most frequently cited activities were: unpaid tutoring of college students; tutoring elementary or secondary children, and donating blood (40-47%). A high percentage of students (25-35%) also participated in service-learning projects, community service via a professional society (ASCE, ASME, AAEE, etc.), unpaid coaching or sports camp volunteer, food bank volunteer, or a short term on-site service project (i.e. spring break service trip, EWB/ESW in-country work). Thirty-six percent of the students also wrote-in a unique service activity. The median activity level during college for most of these common community service activities was more than twice but not routinely. Only 6.5% of the students reported no level of participation in volunteer or community service activities.

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Gender Differences in the Social Responsibility Attitudes of Engineering Students and How They Change Over Time

Cited by 46 publications

References 0 publications

“Girl Power”: Gendered Academic and Workplace Experiences of College Women in Engineering

“Girl Power”: Gendered Academic and Workplace Experiences of College Women in Engineering

Social Consciousness in Engineering Students: An Analysis of Freshmen Design Project Abstracts

Volunteerism in Engineering Students and Its Relation to Social Responsibility

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