Abstract
Scientific and engineering innovation is vital for American competitiveness, quality of life, and national security. However, too few American students, especially women, pursue these fields. Although this problem has attracted enormous attention, rigorously tested interventions outside artificial laboratory settings are quite rare. To address this gap, we conducted a longitudinal field experiment investigating the effect of peer mentoring on women’s experiences and retention in engineering during college transition, assessing its impact for 1 y while mentoring was active, and an additional 1 y after mentoring had ended. Incoming women engineering students (n = 150) were randomly assigned to female or male peer mentors or no mentors for 1 y. Their experiences were assessed multiple times during the intervention year and 1-y postintervention. Female (but not male) mentors protected women’s belonging in engineering, self-efficacy, motivation, retention in engineering majors, and postcollege engineering aspirations. Counter to common assumptions, better engineering grades were not associated with more retention or career aspirations in engineering in the first year of college. Notably, increased belonging and self-efficacy were significantly associated with more retention and career aspirations. The benefits of peer mentoring endured long after the intervention had ended, inoculating women for the first 2 y of college—the window of greatest attrition from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors. Thus, same-gender peer mentoring for a short period during developmental transition points promotes women’s success and retention in engineering, yielding dividends over time.
Funder
National Science Foundation
Publisher
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Reference63 articles.
1. Eagan K (2015) The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2015 (Higher Education Research Institute, Los Angeles).
2. National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (2013) Scientists and Engineers Statistical Data System (SESTAT) (National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA). Available at www.nsf.gov/statistics/sestat/. Accessed January 25, 2016.
3. Corbett C Hill C (2015) Solving the Equation: The Variables for Women’s Success in Engineering and Computing (AAUW, Washington, DC).
4. Women's underrepresentation in science: Sociocultural and biological considerations.
5. Pinker S (2008) The Sexual Paradox: Extreme Men, Gifted Women and the Real Gender Gap (Random House, Canada).
Cited by
232 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献