Relationships Between Engineering Student and Faculty Demographics and Stakeholders Working to Affect Change*

Journal of Engineering Education, Apr 2004 by Johnson, Michelle J, Sheppard, Sheri D

A. Stages 1-6

We divide our subset of the engineering pipeline into five decision points, which are mapped onto the pipeline shown in Figure 1a. Beginning with senior year in HS, the average HS class makes five major decisions: (a) graduate from high school; (b) go on to college either at a two-year or a four-year postsecondary institution; (c) enroll in a four-year college or university; (d) enroll in an engineering program leading to a bachelor's degree; and (e) graduate with a baccalaureate degree in engineering. These decisions occur at the end of several stages in the pipeline: at the end senior year in high school (Stage 1), after HS graduation (Stage 2) but before enrolling in an institution that grants a bachelor's degree in engineering (Stage 3), during the undergraduate years at four-year institutions (Stage 4 and S). Successful navigation of decisions "a" through "e" leads to Stage 6, the receipt of a bachelor's degree m engineering. Figure 1b shows a representation of the entire engineering pipeline as well as the specific portion represented by Stages 1 through 6 and beyond.

B. Pathways to Academic Careers

We represent participation in the academic workforce by two additional levels beyond the baccalaureate degree: Graduates with Masters Degrees in Engineering (Level 1), and Graduates with Doctoral Degrees in Engineering (Level 2). This representation recognizes that students take many career paths and rarely continue directly onto Level 1 from Stage 6 or from Level 1 to Level 2. In fact, data indicate that, on average, for most doctoral degree holders, ten years will elapse between their baccalaureate degree and their doctoral degree [11] and only about 21.7 percent of recent graduates (permanent residents and U.S. citizens) with a doctoral degrees in engineering had definite plans to pursue academic employment or post-doctorate studies in 1999 [12].

C. Pipeline and Pathway Support

We identified several stakeholder organizations/groups active in recruiting and retaining female and underrepresented minority students to engineering fields. Based on data about their programs and missions (obtained through interviews and Web site information) we describe their involvement and actions that affeet students' participation rates at decision points in the subset of the engineering pipeline under study and beyond. Data from our selected group of stakeholders were interpreted in terms of where on the engineering pipeline they focus their activities.

D. Data

The primary source of data for Stages 1-6 was the National Science Foundation's (NSF) publication, Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering: 2000 [2]. The unique presentation of high school data for ages 25 to 29 in this document enabled us to reconstruct the progress of high school students in the class of 1990, through this section of the pipeline. Other data sources [2-8, 12], some of which were based on the U.S. Department of Education's Completions Survey, conducted annually by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) as part of the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), and the Survey of Earned Doctorates, conducted annually for the National Science Foundation (NSF) and four other Federal agencies, were used to supplement the information in the NSF document. The pipeline data were organized to reflect the progress of the class of 1990 as a whole unit, as well as by its gender and ethnic subpopulations. The ethnic categories used are those designated under the old labels and standards where racial/ethnic groups were identified as White (non-Hispanic), Black (non-Hispanic), Hispanic, Asian (or Pacific Islander) and, American Indian (or Alaskan Native) [2]. The old standards were used because the available data used in current data references were organized around these standards.