Mara H. Wasburn

Mentoring Women Faculty: An Instrumental Case Study of Strategic Collaboration.

Numerous studies of college and university faculty have shown that women have fewer mentors and face greater professional isolation, slower rates of promotion, and increased likelihood of leaving an institution before gaining tenure than do their male counterparts. Comparable problems confront women in both national and international corporations as they seek career advancement. To address these problems, many organizations have created formal mentoring programs, which have achieved varying degrees of success. This article presents an instrumental case study of the implementation of a new mentoring model in a university context. The model, strategic collaboration, builds on recent research describing mentoring as a network activity. The collaborative, peer‐oriented structure of the approach, which removes many of the problems inherent in traditional mentoring programs while also retaining their benefits, suggests that it can be particularly beneficial for women seeking further career advancement.

Strategic Collaboration for Ethical Leadership: A Mentoring Framework for Business and Organizational Decision Making

Recent corporate scandals in the U.S. have shaken the public trust and spurred the creation of a host of new regulatory controls and laws to help ensure compliance with ethical standards. The purpose of this paper is to present an innovative and practical model for resolving the complexity of making ethical decisions in the contemporary business environment. The paper presents Strategic Collaboration for Ethical Decision Making, a mentoring framework for organizations. The framework provides a process for making ethical decisions. A case study approach is employed to gain insight into the application of the framework. The effectiveness of the framework is assessed using an innovative technique called Empowerment Evaluation.

Work in progress - engineering students' disciplinary choices: Do race and gender matter?

We explore which engineering disciplines are most effective at attracting undergraduates from various race and gender groups at matriculation and graduation. Women and men choose different disciplines within engineering at matriculation, Industrial Engineering is notable for attracting women and men, and the largest disciplines, Electrical and Mechanical, have the largest enrollment gender gap.

Work in progress - the effect of engineering matriculation status on major selection

This study focuses on how the approach to engineering matriculation affects choice of major. Using the eight institutions represented in the Multiple-Institution Database for Investigating Engineering Longitudinal Development, we compared the majors at matriculation and at the third semester of 1) students who are directly admitted to a discipline 2) students who enter mandatory first-year engineering programs and 3) those who enter colleges of engineering without specifying a major preference. Preliminary findings indicate that students in formal FYE programs are more likely than the direct admits to choose Mechanical, Civil, Computer, and Industrial engineering and less likely to choose Chemical, Electrical, or Materials engineering as their first major. Students who enter as engineering undesignated are more likely to choose Civil, Industrial, and Other engineering and less likely to choose Mechanical, Electrical, Computer, and Materials engineering as their first major than direct admits.

Mothers on the tenure track: what engineering and technology faculty still confront

Despite the many changes in policy and practice that colleges and universities in the United States have instituted to help women faculty achieve work life balance, challenges persist. This article discusses the difficulties still faced by female engineering and engineering technology faculty who are trying to balance the demands of a successful academic career and motherhood. The data, both qualitative and quantitative, are derived from a survey of tenure track female faculty who are members of the Women in Engineering Division of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). Data indicate that, despite the widespread adoption of policies intended to create a more helpful and collegial environment, almost 40% of the respondents rated the quality of the institutional support they receive as fair, poor, or very poor. This research identifies policies that appear to have succeeded, and others that appear to have made little difference, suggesting structural and cultural changes that would address the continuing problems that motherhood creates for female engineering and technology faculty. Such changes could prove helpful to female faculty generally, regardless of their disciplines.

Work in progress - effect of climate and pedagogy on persistence of women in engineering programs

Our goal is to determine how climate and pedagogy affect the persistence of women in undergraduate engineering programs via a longitudinal, multi-institutional, and multivariate study. We focus on the nine institutions of the southeastern university and college coalition for engineering education from 1987 to 2004. The study uses three related data sources: the multiple-institution database for investigating engineering longitudinal development (MIDFIELD), two climate surveys, and three teaching practices surveys. We will conduct new analyses on these existing data as well as new studies focusing on research questions relating climate, pedagogy, and persistence. This triangulated and longitudinal approach provides a powerful historical context to help explain changes and successes in persistence that will reach multiple stakeholders, scaffolding earlier qualitative studies with quantitative results that can inform policymakers. Here, we introduce our study and present initial results related to our first research question.

Is Your Classroom Woman-Friendly? Ten Strategies for Reaching This Goal

A recent report by the National Council for Research on Women (2001) revealed that the number of women entering technology-driven careers has declined. Among the reasons cited is the sometimes chilly climate for women in college classrooms, particularly classrooms with technology-rich environments. In this article, I present strategies that instructors in any discipline can use to make women students feel more welcome in their classrooms. Also included is a group exercise that instructors can use with their students to raise awareness of gender dynamics in the classroom and in everyday life.

Cultivating Greater Acceptance of Women in Technology: A Pilot Study

Many Western nations face a critical shortage of skilled professionals in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). However, despite abundant opportunities, few women prepare themselves for careers in these fields. Several of those concerned with the problem have proposed that new media programming, such as television dramas with women engineers, computer professionals and/or engineers in leading roles, might help attract more women to STEM fields. This article identifies a theoretical rationale for a media-centered strategy, and describes a pilot study whose data suggest that a media-centered approach might have some success in producing greater interest among women in pursuing STEM careers, particularly information technology (IT) careers.

CareerQuesting: Evaluating Web-Based Resources for Interesting Girls in STEM Careers

This paper develops an educational strategy to foster the interest and persistence of middle school girls in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers using existing websites. Criteria are specified that enable middle school teachers to evaluate websites that can serve as supplemental learning activities within prescribed curricula. In particular, these criteria help evaluate sites that provide materials appealing to both boys and girls. This allows teachers to adopt them without concern that they are providing an unfair advantage to girls.