Recruiting and Retaining Women and Minorities in Public Sector EngineeringPositions

摘要

The objective of phase one of this research was to assess the degree to whichcurrently employed Iowa Department of Transportation employees would be affected by a more aggressive policy to recruit and retain women and minority engineers. Phase two was designed to identify problem areas resulting in unacceptably high attrition rate for women, minorities and to a lesser degree, caucasian men in the College of Engineering at ISU. The researchers chose to emphasize institutional reasons why these students often feel a sense of isolation in the engineering program. The visibility problem of the civil engineering profession and the lack of a clear conception of what the practice of civil engineering entails may be a better predictor of attrition than the stereotypical assumption the a majority of students leave their engineering programs because they are not academically able to compete.