Encouraging More Women to Pursue Careers in STEM

From left, Katie Czerniejewski, Julie Fetzer and Dana Voll presented their perspectives on how to attract female students to engineering at IEEE’s Integrating STEM Education Conference

Published April 29, 2014 This content is archived.

Three UB Engineering Sophomores Share their Views and win Best Paper at IEEE Conference

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“As Caucasian, middle class women growing up in suburban areas, we never looked at ourselves as outside the majority. But the moment we decided to enter the field of engineering, we became part of a minority: women who pursue degrees in STEM ”

Many universities today are actively involved in developing programs and opportunities to attract under-represented students to STEM majors. In a unique and enlightening paper, three female engineering students aimed to shed light on this issue by sharing their own experiences about what inspired them to pursue an education in engineering.

The project started in December, when Julie Fetzer, civil engineering, Katie Czerniejewski, biomedical engineering, and Dana Voll, electrical engineering, all sophomores in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at UB, met with Dean Liesl Folks as part of a focus group to discuss ways to balance the ratio of men to women in STEM. The group discussed problems and stereotypes high school girls face about engineering and what colleges like UB could do to encourage more girls to study engineering.

 With the encouragement of the Dean, the three decided to write a paper for presentation at the IEEE Integrating STEM Education Conference. The paper identifies common societal misconceptions about women in STEM disciplines that girls and young women must face as they make decisions about their future career paths, such as “engineering does not benefit humanity,” “you must be a genius,” and that “there are no women in engineering.”

 The paper also describes their experiences in college recruitment activities for STEM programs, and as incoming students in engineering; reviews activities by colleges that positively influenced their degree path decisions, or served as deterrents; and compares their experiences with the recommendations of other authors.

 “Perceptions of University Recruitment Strategies by Female Students in STEM,” FC 109, received the best paper award and will be available through the IEEE database, IEEE Xplore. The conference was held at Princeton University on March 8, 2014.