Outside the classroom: Gender differences in extracurricular activities of engineering students

Abstract

Data from the Academic Pathways Study, a component of the NSF-funded Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education, were used to investigate engineering student involvement in extracurricular activities. The study design used a variety of methods: the results presented here are from longitudinal and cross-sectional surveys of engineering students as well as interviews with graduating seniors. Quantitative data from both surveys suggest that women place higher importance on extracurricular activities than their male counterparts, as well as reporting higher participation in both engineering-related and non-engineering-related extracurricular activities. In addition, the importance of non-engineering extracurricular activities and the level of involvement of engineering-related extracurricular activities increases over four years of engineering education for women. For men, an increase with time was only observed for involvement in engineering-related activities. Results from the interviews corroborate the quantitative findings as well as suggesting some intriguing differences between genders: for example, that women may be more likely to take on leadership roles and men more likely to be involved in activities which involve design or `handson' work.