Silicon Valley Women in Engineering Conference — Creating Community and Nurturing Engineering Identity

Women in Engineering: Promoting Identity Exploration and Professional Development

“…They also have opportunities to network with peers and industry leaders, develop career-relevant skills, find mentors, and develop a sense of belonging with like-minded students, faculty, and professionals in the industry. Our qualitative data from this and prior conferences [2] consistently show that the conference is successful in meeting these goals. To better understand how to support women in engineering, we also explored the impact of the conference of the development of an engineering identity, which has been shown to predict retention in engineering [3], [4].…”

“…As universities aim to address the gender gap problem of their engineering and computer science student population [1], recruiting and retaining women has become ever more critical. To this end, a one-day annual Women in Engineering conference [2] was organized and hosted by a large public university in the west. One overarching goal of the conference is to foster the development of participants' engineering identity which is related to their educational and professional persistence [3] [4].…”

“…One overarching goal of the conference is to foster the development of participants' engineering identity which is related to their educational and professional persistence [3] [4]. A review of the literature summarizing approaches to recruitment and retention of women and the role of engineering identity can be found in a prior publication [2].…”