Gender differences in freshman engineering students' identification with engineering

Abstract

Despite a significant increase in efforts to recruit and retain more engineering students through initiatives such as learning communities, mentoring, and pre-college programs, the decline in engineering enrollment continues. Recent research and some of our previous work suggest that students' identification with engineering plays a critical role in their decision to pursue engineering and to persist. Herein, we present findings from a survey that was developed and piloted to freshman engineering students (N=45) to provide us insight into the development of an engineer identity. Survey items, primarily comprised of open-ended questions, were developed based on our prior interview data and analysis aimed at understanding factors pertinent to students identifying with engineering. We present comparative analyses of male and female responses of freshmen engineering students. Our findings suggest that there are significant gender differences in how freshman students identify with engineering and with becoming an engineer. The findings of this study have key implications for improving recruitment and retention.