Asee peer logo

Opportunity Gaps for Women in Chemical Engineering: A Quantitative Critical Investigation

Download Paper |

Conference

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Baltimore , Maryland

Publication Date

June 25, 2023

Start Date

June 25, 2023

End Date

June 28, 2023

Conference Session

Chemical Engineering Division (ChED) Technical Session 1: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in ChE

Tagged Division

Chemical Engineering Division (ChED)

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

13

DOI

10.18260/1-2--43803

Permanent URL

https://strategy.asee.org/43803

Download Count

123

Request a correction

Paper Authors

biography

Eric Burkholder Auburn University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-7420-4290

visit author page

Eric Burkholder is an Assistant Professor in the departments of physics and chemical engineering at Auburn University. He completed a PhD in chemical engineering at the California Institute of Technology studying the physics of soft active matter. He then transitioned into STEM education research during his time as a postdoc at Stanford Univeristy. Eric's research focuses on the intersections of assessement, problem-solving, and equity in the undergraduate and graduate STEM classroom.

visit author page

Download Paper |

Abstract

There have been national calls to increase the representation of historically excluded groups, including women and students of color, in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Recent data also highlights that different fields have made differential progress in achieving equity and parity in their disciplines. In this work, we study an institutional dataset to identify whether chemical engineering has achieved gender parity in degree attainment at a large land-grant institution. We find that women are less likely than men to enroll in chemical engineering in their first semester of university and are also less likely to receive chemical engineering degrees, though the gap in degree attainment is not entirely explained by initial interest in chemical engineering. We find that women who enroll in Mass and Energy Balances (MEB) receive slightly lower grades than men with similar first-year GPAs, but these women persist through the rest of the chemical engineering curriculum at similar rates to men who receive the same grades in MEB. These quantitative measures thus identify three critical junctures affecting the gender gap in opportunities to pursue chemical engineering careers: (1) initial aspiration to study chemical engineering, (2) experience in the first-year engineering curriculum, and (3) challenges within foundational courses within the major itself. The results then suggest that a holistic approach to recruiting and supporting women within chemical engineering is needed, which may include interventions such as high school outreach programs, first-year mentoring programs, more equitable assessment methods, and cultural change within the department itself.

Burkholder, E. (2023, June), Opportunity Gaps for Women in Chemical Engineering: A Quantitative Critical Investigation Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--43803

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2023 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015