Increasing diversity and broadening participation in engineering programs has been a persistent challenge due to various factors. Despite efforts to enhance engineering education, we have not seen a significant increase in matriculation, retention, and graduation rates in certain engineering fields. For decades, academic institutions have received…

Women are increasingly present in the field of engineering, but despite a significant female presence, it has been found that the programs continue to make no reference to women scientists. In chemical engineering, for example, all the names of scientists mentioned in the programs belong to men only. To test this hypothesis of over-representation…

TECH-FIT is a National Science Foundation initiative at FIT, part of the State University of New York. An institution with over 85% female students, this interdisciplinary, design-related STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) project sought to increase inclusion and student performance in STEM. Building on new and existing…

A project-based course for first-year engineering students, called Engineering Exploration, was created an implemented with the goals of increasing retention, providing professional skills, increasing interest about engineering, and to aide in choosing an engineering major. Over 100 students have taken the course since its inception in Fall 2009.…

Women continue to be underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields and in STEM leadership positions. According to the most recent data available from the National Science Foundation, in academia only 31% of full-time STEM faculty and 27% of STEM deans and department heads are women. By comparison at Stevenson…

This paper focuses on curriculum development in higher education and gender differences in science, mathematics, and engineering education. Females attribute their problems to not being smart enough to handle the course materials; however, males attribute their problems to poor teaching or the course materials. Classes themselves and the internal…

Reports on a project that attempts to inform faculty of female-friendly changes in curriculum content and pedagogy derived from research in women's and ethnic studies. Supports the hypothesis that more inclusionary techniques help reverse the trend of increasing student attrition. (DDR)

This study examined curricular reform processes at two Swedish institutes of technology through a gender perspective, relating them to two social theories the reproduction theory of Bourdieu and Passeron and the gender contract theory of Yvonne Hirdman. The aim of the reform process was to make educational programs in computer engineering more…