Case Study: San Diego Mesa Community College

Women Now Nearly Half of San Diego Mesa Community College's Geographic Information Systems Program

Recruitment Strategies

All eight CalWomenTech Project sites were required to carry out four starter template recruitment strategies during their first year of participation in the Project. In addition, they could incorporate additional recruitment strategies into their annual strategic plans.

San Diego Mesa successfully completed all of the four required recruitment strategies in the recommended timeline; the percentage of women enrolled in GIS increased by 15% in 15 months -- from 34.6% to 52.6%.

The required recruitment strategies were:

• Identifying female role models in GIS and taking their photos for marketing collateral to be developed by IWITTS.
• Distributing recruitment posters, flyers, brochures and a CalWomenTech College Website section featuring female role models.

The college carried out additional strategies, including:

• PowerPoint presentation developed by IWITTS made to appeal to potential female students. See example slides.
• Holding an annual GIS Day with a focus on Women in GIS that includes female role models, handing out Women in GIs brochures, hanging up CalWomenTech posters, a hands-on activity with GPS units and career information.
• A "word-of-mouth" strategy asking students to invite female friends to enroll/attend GIS day.
• Developing a San Diego Mesa GIS Facebook fan page with a "Women's Wednesday" with information about female role models working in GIS and career resources.

Recruitment Results

Fifteen months into the CalWomenTech Project after completing the required recruitment strategies San Diego Mesa's GIS program increased the enrollment of women by 15% -- from 81.3% to 100% -- and had 50% women for two semesters. Between spring 2008 and spring 2010, the aggregate recruitment rate leveled out to 43.3% (still an 8.7% increase.) In advanced GIS courses where students had to complete prerequisite introductory courses, the improvement in recruitment of female students was even more pronounced in the long term due to an increased number of women in the pipeline. The percentage of women went from a baseline of 31.5% to 42.7% on average through spring 2010, an increase of 11.2%.

Retention Strategies

The most important retention strategy -- implemented shortly after the Project began -- was that GIS instructors modified their teaching style based on the WomenTech Training they received on retention. Here are examples of how instructors changed the way they taught:

• They started carefully distributing equipment -- such as GPS units -- instead of letting students take the equipment on a first-come, first-serve basis. By deliberately handing the equipment to female students, instructors make sure that women who are hesitant to grab a GPS unit still have an opportunity for hands-on learning.

• They provided information on employment trends, salary and career options of particular interest to women considering a career in GIS -- such as full-time versus part-time and working on site versus from home.
• They decided to begin assigning group leaders on rotation so everyone gets a chance to be in a leadership role, including women that might defer.

When speaking about the impact that the CalWomenTech Project and IWITTS' retention training had on the GIS program and faculty, Kim Mathis -- one of the instructors in the introductory GIS courses and a co-leader on the San Diego Mesa College CalWomenTech Leadership Team -- said:

"We became more aware of the differences in women vs. men, including an imbalance in numbers in the GIS industry and a difference in learning styles and perseverance (with regard to low grades). As a result, we have redesigned our lectures and teaching style to be more encouraging to students -- whether it's the first day of class or half-way through the semester when distributing a low mid-term exam grade. As a result, I have had less students (and specifically less women) drop my class after the mid-term and higher grades overall."

The Leadership Team -- including all GIS faculty members -- decided to make holding additional on-site WomenTech retention trainings for new faculty/staff members a part of their retention plan after the outcome of the original training.

Retention Results

Over three years, retention rates improved by over 6% on average for both female and male students in the GIS program. Between spring 2008 and fall 2009, the aggregate completion rate was 88.3% for women and 86.8% for men. Again, the greatest increase in retention can be seen in the advanced courses where the completion rate went from 82.5% to 92.5% for women and from 75.9% to 90% for men. That's an increase in retention of 10% for females and 14% for men!

The large improvements in the recruitment and retention rates for female students in advanced courses are important because 1) students cannot enter them without successfully completing introductory courses and 2) it means that female students are persisting after the introductory courses.

Sustainability

The CalWomenTech Project model was designed to institutionalize gender equity strategies into the Project's community college sites. Now with one year until Project completion, IWITTS has been working with the sites to ensure sustainability beyond the life of the Project.

San Diego Mesa plans to continue distributing the "Women in GIS" posters, banner, website section, Facebook page and other outreach collateral developed during the Project. On the retention side, the GIS instructors have made a commitment to continue to teach to female learning styles, a strategy that has worked to improve retention for both female and male students.

Learn more about the San Diego Mesa GIS program.

Written June 2010, three years after San Diego Mesa began the CalWomenTech Project and one year prior to its completion.