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Influences of Female/Women Engineering Professionals at the Workplace, Home, and Community

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Conference

2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Tampa, Florida

Publication Date

June 15, 2019

Start Date

June 15, 2019

End Date

June 19, 2019

Conference Session

Women in Engineering Division Technical Session 2

Tagged Division

Women in Engineering

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

15

DOI

10.18260/1-2--32963

Permanent URL

https://strategy.asee.org/32963

Download Count

379

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Paper Authors

biography

John M. Mativo University of Georgia

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Dr. John Mativo is Associate Professor at the University of Georgia. His research interest lies in two fields. The first is research focusing on best and effective ways to teaching and learning in STEM K-16. He is currently researching on best practices in learning Dynamics, a sophomore engineering core course. The second research focus of Dr. Mativo is energy harvesting in particular the design and use of flexible thermoelectric generators. His investigation is both for the high-tech and low tech applications. In addition to teaching courses such as energy systems, mechanics, mechatronics, and production, he investigates best ways to expand cutting edge technologies to the workforce.

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biography

Uduak Z. George San Diego State University

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Uduak Z. George is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at San Diego State University. She received her B.S. in Electrical/Electronic Engineering and M.S. in Computational Mathematics with Modeling. She earned her doctoral degree in Mathematics. Her research interests include computational fluid dynamics, biomechanics, parameter estimation, digital image processing and analysis, and numerical approximation of partial differential equations on fixed and evolving domains.

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Abstract

This paper explores the influence of women engineering professionals at their workplace, home, and community. Participants of the study were members of the Women in Engineering Division (WIED) of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). The study targeted these cohorts because WIED works to increase the participation of women at all levels of engineering education and the profession. An electronic survey was emailed to members of the division via their listserv. Survey data was collected and analyzed. Of the 193 responses received, two-thirds were first generation engineers in their families, 70% were satisfied with their mobility at the work place, and 99% felt they made a positive contribution at work. A large percentage (85%) of participants stated that they influenced activities at their work place compared to community (13%) and home (10%). Remarkably, 46 participants (24%) had daughters who were attending college, of which 25 (54%) were pursuing a degree in engineering. Subsequently, we developed causal loop diagrams (based on a system dynamics/thinking modeling approach) to capture the complexity of the interactions between women engineers, community and the educational aspirations of their college-aged daughters. The causal loop diagrams predict that an increase in the number of women engineering professionals yield an increase in the number of female students enrolling in engineering colleges, creating a feedback loop that gives an exponential growth in the number of women engineering professionals.

Mativo, J. M., & George, U. Z. (2019, June), Influences of Female/Women Engineering Professionals at the Workplace, Home, and Community Paper presented at 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Tampa, Florida. 10.18260/1-2--32963

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