Maintaining undergraduate females' interest in an engineering program

Oviedo, Pamela It is well-documented that for females to graduate with science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) related degrees, these women must have strong academic self-efficacy. Unfortunately, enrollment data from local and national data indicate fewer female college students than males interested in STEM disciplines. Three possible strategies for enhancing academic self-efficacy are creating living-learning programs, participating in peer mentoring programs, and receiving faculty support. This collective case study will qualitatively explore the experiences of five junior undergraduate females enrolled in an engineering discipline at a selected university to understand better how supporting academic self-efficacy through living-learning programs, peer mentoring, and faculty support may have helped their persistence as engineering majors. The social cognitive career theory of Lent, Brown, Hackett and Bandura's social cognitive theory provide the theoretical framework for this study. The research questions will focus on the females' perceptions of academic self-efficacy, the effectiveness of living-learning programs and peer mentoring, and the support of faculty members as it relates to female STEM persistence. The data analysis plan includes a strategy for preparing, organizing, interpreting data, categorizing coded data, and extracting themes. Key findings will provide a basis for the eventual deliverable of this study. The study supports social change by allowing stakeholders, administrators, and educators to understand what needs to be implemented in the K-12 system to support undergraduate female engineering majors' interest and persistence in underrepresented STEM careers as they enter higher education.

Grantor dc:publisher

Alverno College

Year dc:date

2023

Author dc:creator

• Oviedo, Pamela

• Women in engineering
• Engineering--Study and teaching (Higher)

Statement dc:rights

• These materials may be used by individuals and libraries for personal use, research, teaching (including distribution to classes), or for any fair use as defined by U.S. Copyright Law.

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

https://alverno.omeka.net/items/show/840

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:alverno.omeka.net:840