Why Women Choose Service-Learning: Seeking and Finding Engineering-Related Experiences

摘要

As a field, engineering remains challenged with regard to gender parity and ethnic diversity despite efforts over the last 20 years aimed at closing such gaps. Although research and curricular reform efforts have advanced our understanding of what works to attract women to engineering, we still know little from the student perspective as to why some practices are successful in attracting and retaining women. It is not enough to know what works, but we must also know why some practices work in order to create lasting change and reach diversity goals. Our study begins addressing this why question by qualitatively examining eight women participants' choices to enroll in a service-learning course (Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS)) that has been successful in attracting women over 16 years. Our results show that our participants choose EPICS as a way to gain experience doing engineering; that EPICS provides the benefit of contextualized learning with resulting impacts within EPICS and in other classes, and that EPICS positively impacts commitment to engineering. Interpreting our results, we argue that women are seeking ways to gain engineering experience in a setting that is comfortable to them, such as EPICS. The context of the experience and ability to help others is important, but secondary to gaining engineering experience.