CIES Conference: How Culture, and Climate Affect U.S Female Graduate Engineering Enrollment and Graduation Rate
I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to present my research in Atlanta at the 2017 CIES conference: “Problematizing (In)Equality: The Promise of Comparative and International Education.” This conference is one of the leading academic conferences attended by researchers, students, practitioners and policy makers interested in comparative and international education. I presented my paper on the panel: Modalities of Increasing Access, Achievement, and Retention in Education at the CIES conference.
Speakers in the panel, Modalities of Increasing Access, Achievement, and Retention in Education, assessed and discussed how access to quality educational opportunities can be an equalizing factor for society. However, many student groups face barriers to access that significantly diminish their opportunity for academic success. The panel presentations problematized and discussed barriers to access, exploring both structural and socio-cultural dimensions of access across different levels of education, and all the presenters on my panel were from the Stanford Graduate School of Education. I presented my paper, How Culture, and Climate Affect U.S Female Graduate Engineering Enrollment and Graduation Rate. The central hypothesis of my research is: Why is there a shortage of U.S. female students pursuing STEM graduate degrees, with a focus on the sub-discipline of engineering, and what are the significant factors that are affecting the shortage of U.S. females in STEM at the graduate level. To address this, I discussed how the climate and culture of specific graduate STEM degree sub-disciplines affect the retention and graduation of female students
I presented in areas related to my master’s research proposal. In my presentation, I discussed how culture and climate of engineering graduate programs have a major effect on graduate student attrition in engineering programs. I specifically focused on how the chilly female graduate students encounter, in the laboratory dominated culture of most STEM graduate programs, when combined with a departmental and institutional climate that perceives females as less qualified their male counterparts and the negative effect of gender stereotypes pertaining to women’s perceived lower ability in domains, such as mathematics and physical reasoning (Muller 2012, Ramirez 2012), can have a debilitating effect on the retention of female graduate students.
I also discussed the implications of the U.S. women in graduate engineering programs. Such as how American engineering and technology companies do not have access to a large talent pool and the potential for scientific and engineering innovation. Women obtain about half of U.S. graduate degrees in biology, and other physical life sciences yet they earn less than 20% of the graduate degrees in engineering nationally (National Science Foundation, 2016).
Attending this conference was an extremely rewarding experience. I received useful feedback on my research and could attend interesting panels, specifically related to gender. I was also able to attend one of the meetings held by the Gender & Education Committee. This committee fosters attention to gender issues in the CIES and promote the inclusion and professional development of women. Recent topics have included: gender as a cross-cutting theme in research, policy, and advocacy; family life and academic stress; gender and peace education; and globalization, gender, and education. One of the papers that was presented explored the impact of gender-math stereotypes on students’ self-assessment in their math competence and aspiration in science/engineering related future careers. With the same level of performance feedbacks (i.e. test scores), male students have been found to have higher self-assessment in their math competences, which increases their odds of pursuing and persisting in careers in quantitative fields. It was interesting to learn how this research accounted for stereotypes from parents, classmates, schoolmates, and students themselves to assess the low math self-assessment. Overall, there were many interesting papers and even new book releases that are pertinent to gender and diversity which I was exposed to at this conference.
Written by Fareeda Zikry, M.A. candidate in International Comparative Education at Stanford University. She received a conference grant from the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Found out more here: https://globalstudents.stanford.edu/research-and-conference-grants
