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Ac 2010-2242: Calwomentech Project: Recruiting and Retaining Women in Technology Programs
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Milgram, Donna Severs, Daniella |
| Copyright Year | 2010 |
| Abstract | The Institute for Women in Trades, Technology Science’s (IWITTS) CalWomenTech Project is being highlighted by NSF following an expert panel review at the three year mark in December 2008 for demonstrating significant achievement and program effectiveness to the Committee for Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) Performance Assessment, where it has also been very well received. Project outcomes show that colleges that proactively recruit women into their technology programs will show a significant increase in the percentage of women students in those programs in a little over a year. Of the four community colleges participating in the Project’s first cohort, the two sites that implemented recruitment strategies within recommended timelines experienced a significant increase in women in targeted programs: City College of San Francisco’s (CCSF) Computer Networking and Information Technology (CNIT) program went from 18% to 30% female students and San Diego Mesa College’s Geographic Information Systems program rose from 35% to 50% female. The retention strategies implemented by CalWomenTech colleges have also led to a significant net increase in the completion rates of not only females, but also males, in several of the colleges. Both colleges that saw the largest increases in female completion rates, from 81% to 100% in 15 months (San Diego Mesa College) and from 57% to 100% in 9 months (Evergreen Valley College), also saw a 20% increase in male retention. CCSF’s CNIT program saw a significant improvement to completion rates after repeated focus on retention with both full-time and adjunct faculty. Female baseline completion rates increased from 64% in 2006/2007 to 90% in spring 2009. CCSF’s male retention rates also increased from 72% to 88%. In addition to providing an overview of proven CalWomenTech recruitment and retention strategies and the online CalWomenTech tools available to all educators, the paper also shares the newly compiled results from surveys of 60 female students in technology courses in which they are underrepresented and describes how the results have been used to evaluate and inform recruitment and retention strategies employed by the colleges. CalWomenTech Project Model The intent of this NSF initiative is to broaden the participation of girls and women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education. In particular, the extension services are to ―provide consulting services to educators and institutions, to enable them to adopt and embed proven gender-inclusive policies and practices in pedagogy, the design of curriculum materials, student support programs, educator, and faculty development.‖1 The first goal of the CalWomenTech Project is to increase the number of women enrolled and retained in STEM education in the eight selected CalWomenTech community colleges. The second goal is to institutionalize gender equity strategies in each participating college to make sure that the successful recruitment and retention strategies are used beyond the life of the project. The third goal is to illustrate to the California and national community college system that STEM gender shelf tools as possible. For example, the Project Learning Library mission is to provide building block technology skills to female (and male) students who may come with less experience than their classmates. One example of a library holding is a CD and workbook on spatial reasoning that NSF research has shown improves retention of women in engineering by teaching them this skill. 3 The second core belief is that change will happen faster and be institutionalized if it is supported from the top down. To this end, IWITTS’s focus is not just on STEM instructors, but also includes the key leaders, staff and administrators of the colleges in a variety of functions. For a more detailed description on the resources provided to educators and their female students through the CalWomenTech Project, please refer to a previously published paper on the Project. 4 The IWITTS CalWomenTech Project Model utilizes a top down leadership team approach that has been used successfully in three of the organization’s multi-site national projects. In the CalWomenTech Project each college has a key leader and a co-leader, along with a leadership team of about ten key players. The key leader, in many cases, is the dean that oversees the technology programs, the dean of workforce development, or is the head of the technology department. The co-leader is often a key instructor. The leadership team is made up of the dean or chair of the department of the targeted program, a minimum of two instructors in targeted technology courses (with one being an adjunct instructor when possible) and the director of counseling. Other possible members include the learning center director, tutoring center director, curriculum developer, articulation officer, recruitment director, outreach coordinator, public information officer, an equity/women's center coordinator, a school-to-career director, a research and planning officer, and other key stakeholders. The leadership team model ensures that the entire college will work together to make sure women are recruited and retained in STEM programs, and that the STEM program will not be expected to take on functions outside of its normal duties. For example, in many of the colleges the public information officer has assisted with distributing a press release about the project, which has resulted in popular press including television coverage in two communities. In most of the colleges, the counselors and the outreach staff (when they exist) are involved in distribution of the posters and flyers and introducing students to the CalWomenTech section of the school website. Having a dean or chair of the department involved facilitates bigger picture changes, such as the introduction of a spatial reasoning course at one of the colleges on an accelerated timeline, the hiring of female lab assistants, and creating additional open lab hours at another. The leadership team model also increases the likelihood that the changes that come about as a result of the CalWomenTech Project will be institutionalized and persist beyond the life of the project. While IWITTS has seen positive results based on the individual efforts of an instructor or administrator, those results are usually lost if that person leaves the institution or their responsibilities change. The CalWomenTech Project has successfully weathered the turnover of five key leaders/deans in two years in eight colleges, an indicator that the leadership team model is critical to success in community colleges that often see much turnover in key positions. attend by paying for a working lunch and by paying adjuncts their customary hourly rate to attend at need. The results of the female technology student survey administered in spring 2009 by Evaluation & Research Associates (ERA), the external evaluator of the CalWomenTech Project, are invaluable in determining which classroom strategies the women are currently experiencing, those they find most helpful, and those they would most like to experience going forward. Fifty percent or more of the survey respondents reported exposure to 12 of the 20 classroom retention strategies listed in the survey. It appears that instructors in the targeted classes have implemented over half of the 20 recommended strategies in their classrooms at this point in the Project, and after seeing the survey results many instructors have committed to making those strategies female students would most like to experience a part of their regular teaching strategies. Further evidence that classroom strategies are among the Project’s most effective strategies is that they have impacted the retention of both women and men. If the colleges had chosen femaleonly support strategies (e.g. Women in Technology clubs) the data would not show such a positive impact on the retention of male students. The CalWomenTech Project is being highlighted by NSF following an expert panel review at the three year mark in December 2008 for demonstrating significant achievement and program effectiveness to the Committee for Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) Performance Assessment, where it has also been very well received. Survey of Female Technology Course Students on Successful Implementation of Classroom Strategies The CalWomenTech college/site completion data provided by the external evaluators and the results of the ―Survey of Female Technology Course Students‖ administered to women in the targeted classes across seven of the eight colleges provides evidence that classroom strategies (e.g. learning style, appealing to female interests, a positive classroom environment, etc.) appear to be succeeding in improving retention rates of female (and male) students. This is the first time as far as the CalWomenTech PI knows that female students in technology courses have been surveyed on what retention strategies they have experienced in their courses and which ones they feel are most helpful. Sixty female students responded to the anonymous survey out of the 121 female students enrolled in the targeted courses at the seven colleges that distributed the survey. The CalWomenTech Project has no way of determining the unique number of female students enrolled in the targeted courses as some women take multiple courses and the college data collection systems are not set up to take this into account. All female students were instructed to take the survey only once. One of the most important outcomes of the female student survey has been that the leadership teams at several colleges have incorporated the survey results into their strategic plans (e.g. Evergreen Valley College is working on adding more hands-on elements to an introductory course curriculum). Colleges were provided with the female survey data filtered for their college to start. At the annual Project |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.iwitts.org/component/ars/repository/recruitment/recruitment-1-0/milgram-asee2010.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://peer.asee.org/calwomentech-project-recruiting-and-retaining-women-in-technology-programs.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
