The Impact of SWE’s Academic Leadership for Women in Engineering Program
The Academic Leadership for Women in Engineering (ALWE) is a program offered by SWE and designed to equip women engineering faculty with the tools to thrive as academic leaders. It combines skill-building workshops, mentorship, and peer networking to empower participants to navigate institutional challenges and advance into leadership roles. Such programs were created to increase women’s representation in academic leadership. Federal investments into these types of initiatives have led to increases in the number of women who are full professors and deans of engineering colleges.
SWE has been offering ALWE for over a decade. To understand the impact of the program, we conducted a study using a retrospective, longitudinal design to follow women’s career paths from 2015 to 2023 after their participation in the ALWE program. Data were gathered from publicly available sources such as LinkedIn, Google Scholar, professional society websites, and university pages.
Major findings:
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- Approximately 88% of ALWE alumnae who stayed in academia advanced through either promotion or a multi-role academic pathway.
- 71% of ALWE alumnae who remained in academia had become senior faculty, while 16% had served as department chairs or directors, and 7% had become deans, vice-presidents, or presidents of their institutions.
- Across all cohorts, 7 out of 10 ALWE participants remained in academia.
Read our report to learn more about our findings and recommendations for creating a strong leadership program for women engineers in academia.
Exploring the Relationship Between Diverse Engineering Faculty and Women’s Degree Attainment
Question: Can the percentage of women faculty at a university predict the percentage of women graduating with engineering degrees?
In a globally competitive economy, a diverse workforce is crucial for providing creative viewpoints, producing innovative products, and increasing financial returns. Additionally, equal participation of individuals from different social identities can lead to equitable resource distribution and create inclusive environments.
Research indicates how the presence of women faculty can influence women’s choice of major and serve as role models and mentors. This study investigates the relationship between women’s representation in engineering tenured/tenure-track faculty positions and the percentage of degrees awarded to women in engineering fields at doctoral universities in the United States. Controlling for institutional factors such as private/public institutions, Carnegie classification, university size, and engineering research expenditures, we use hierarchical regression analysis to determine if the percentage of women engineering faculty is positively associated with the percentage of engineering degrees awarded to women at the bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral levels when controlling for institutional factors. The findings indicate that an increase in women faculty can positively affect the number of women engineering graduates. Specifically, data show that a 1% increase in the number of women faculty could lead to almost a 0.5% increase in the number of degrees awarded to women in engineering. The findings highlight the importance of faculty representation in predicting the degree attainment for underrepresented students in engineering, suggesting faculty from similar backgrounds positively impact students from their same identity group.
The data used in this research study comes from the American Society of Engineering Educators (ASEE) Profiles of Engineering and Engineering Technology Survey, an annual survey of engineering colleges in the U.S.
Recommendations
To increase women’s participation in engineering degrees, higher education administration should prioritize supporting women faculty through various initiatives. Creating inclusive work settings through gender diversity training promotes a supportive work culture. Family-friendly practices, like flexible work schedules, can help faculty balance their careers and caregiving duties. Professional development programs customized to women’s needs, affinity groups, and outreach programs can foster a sense of belonging and motivate the next generation of female engineers. By implementing these recommendations, administrators can retain women faculty and create a more diverse and equitable learning environment to increase women’s representation in engineering.
Learn More About This Research
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- Read the paper presented at the AERA Conference in April 2024.
- Read the article in SWE Magazine’s State of Women in Engineering 2024 issue.
- Read the Work-in-Progress paper presented at the ASEE Annual Conference in June 2023.
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