The survey will be administered to all female and minority male engineering students at the 29 participating institutions as well as a random sample of non-minority male students enrolled in the schools' engineering programs. I believe that one of the major reasons is that the climate in many engineering schools is not a conducive learning environment for men or women. While women make up 46 percent of the total U.S. work force, only 8.5 percent of the country's engineers are women. Women average 20 percent of the enrollment in engineering schools. The gender disparity grows when dropout rates are considered.
Retention rates are a particular problem in the freshman and sophomore years.
That's something we intend to explore with this survey. Metz and Brainard believe the survey results will help engineering schools, individually and collectively, identify problems and find solutions that ultimately will improve retention rates for both men and women. Participating students will be asked a range of questions to measure how well their school's academic and social climates are meeting their needs. The survey is modeled after a five-year climate survey administered to engineering students at the UW and funded by the National Science Foundation. The Engineering Information Foundation is a nonprofit organization that supports educational and research programs that advance the availability and use of information related to engineering, programs that encourage women to pursue careers in engineering, and projects that improve the access to engineering information at schools in developing countries.