The CalWomenTech Project has assisted eight community college technology programs to retain more women in their programs. After only one semester many of the colleges experienced increased retention of both their female and male students.

What retention strategies did the colleges use to achieve these successful results?  Watch IWITTS Executive Director Donna Milgram discuss the strategies and results, and read on to learn more.

Retention Results
Retention Strategy Highlights
Retention Tools for Your Program

Retention Results

A major accomplishment of the CalWomenTech Project has been the improved retention of both women and men across the community college sites, which IWITTS attributes to classroom strategies employed by instructors that have positively impacted female and male students alike.

Originally, IWITTS anticipated that the outcome of the CalWomenTech Project would be a comparable retention rate for women and men rather than significant increases in completion rates for both genders, so this unanticipated result has been an exciting development in the Project. Two CalWomenTech colleges that saw some of the largest increases in female completion rates early in the Project, from 57% to 100% in 9 months (Evergreen Valley College) and from 81% to 100% in 15 months (San Diego Mesa College), also saw a 20% increase in male retention. Most of the colleges that increased the female retention rates also had comparable gains in male retention rates.

As of fall 2009, these sites showed the greatest gains in completion rates for female students:

• Evergreen Valley College had a baseline retention rate for female students of 57.6% that went to 100% for two nonconsecutive semesters. In the aggregate, the average female completion rate is now 88.3%, an increase of 30.7%. Male completion baseline was 61% -- also low -- and now the aggregate is 86.4%, an increase of 25.6%.
• San Diego Mesa College had a baseline retention rate for female students of 81% that went to 100% for two semesters. In the aggregate, the average female completion rate is now 88.3%, an increase of 7%. Male completion baseline was 80.3% and now the aggregate is 86.8%, an increase of 6.5%.
• City College of San Francisco had a baseline completion rate of 64.1% for female students that stayed low until spring 2009 when it went up to 90.3% (a 26.2% increase) after repeated focus on retention with faculty -- both fulltime and adjunct. In fall 2009, the completion rate for women was still 11.4% above baseline at 75.5%.  IWITTS Executive Director Donna Milgram discusses the rate increase at CCSF in this video clip.
• Las Positas College went from a baseline retention rate for female students of 74.2% to an average female completion rate of 97.6% (an increase of 23.4%), while the male completion rate for the college went from a baseline of 88.2% to an aggregate of 95.8% (an increase of 7.6%). At baseline the female completion rate was 14% lower than the male completion rate -- now they are comparable.

The other CalWomenTech sites have had smaller improvements in their retention rates (six of eight have had some gain on average) or have not been able to implement all the retention strategies as planned.

The CalWomenTech Project is still in progress and final numbers will not be available until summer/fall 2011. It is expected that by the end of the Project's five years, all of the colleges will have had considerable increases in both female and male completion and that retention rates will be comparable between genders. This page will be updated with the final results at the conclusion of the CalWomenTech Project.

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Retention Strategy Highlights

The IWITTS Project Model is to provide each college with WomenTech training on recruitment and retention at the beginning of the Project, exposing them to a wide menu of strategies.

The CalWomenTech Leadership Teams -- groups made up of eight to ten technology faculty members, counselors and administrators -- created an annual retention success plan. Almost all college instructors (including adjuncts) underwent retention training and in many cases the strategies were implemented in the classroom right away. At this point in the Project, the colleges have completed three retention plans each, selecting on average, five broad retention strategies to implement each year.

The primary strategies in the Project -- chosen by the colleges themselves -- have been classroom strategies (e.g. appealing to female interests, a positive classroom environment, building block skills, etc.) versus traditional support strategies such as mentoring. This is the reason they have impacted the retention of both women and men. If the colleges had chosen female-only support strategies (e.g. women in technology clubs) the data would not show such a positive impact on the retention of male students.

The retention strategies implemented soon after the initial training by the colleges showing the biggest leaps in completion rates included:

• On-campus faculty trainings focusing on teaching to female learning styles, providing building block skills, ensuring female students spent equal time using the equipment in the labs, and integrating female students into the classroom.
• Revising the program's curriculum to be more female-friendly. Some changes included using more contextual examples that appeal to women, more collaborative projects, and providing additional open lab time outside of the classroom.

Survey of Female Technology Course Students

How successful were these initial strategies? IWITTS's external evaluators decided to ask the female students themselves.

In 2009, the Project conducted a survey of female students in targeted technology classes across seven of the eight colleges on what recruitment and retention strategies have proven most effective (n=60), from a total pool of 121. The results from the "Survey of Female Technology Course Students" allowed the colleges to see which classroom strategies the women are currently experiencing, those they find most helpful and those they would most like to experience going forward. To IWITTS' knowledge, this is the first time that female students in technology courses have been surveyed on what retention strategies they have experienced in their courses and which ones they feel are most helpful.

Some general results from the female student survey:

• 50% or more of the respondents reported exposure to 12 out of the 20 retention strategies.
• Of those females who experienced the strategies, half of the strategies were rated helpful or very helpful by 90% to 100% of the students.
• Many of the students who did not experience the strategies wanted to do so. The top strategy, rated as helpful or very helpful by 100% of female students, was: "Learned basic skills needed for the course during the first few weeks of a course."
• Overall, most female students had experienced many of the instructor classroom strategies and found them helpful and those that hadn't experienced them wanted to. This indicates that these instructor classroom strategies for retention are welcomed by the women students.

The women who took the female technology survey are a racially-diverse group, reflective of California's community college population with 25% of the students identifying as Hispanic, 14% as Asian and 17% as multi-racial. Another important result seen in the demographic section of the survey is that almost 80% of the women are working and taking technology courses at the same time with 32% working more than 40 hours a week or more.

It appears that instructors in the targeted classes have implemented over half of the 20 recommended strategies in their classrooms and, after seeing the survey results, many instructors committed to making those strategies female students would most like to experience a part of their regular teaching strategies. Instructors on Leadership Teams that went over the results during a monthly conference call or strategic planning session came up with creative ways to start employing the strategies female students requested and found most helpful. One instructor from San Diego Mesa College came up with a plan to start assigning leadership roles in group projects randomly to avoid men taking the leadership role in groups more often than women (Rosser 1998), after she saw how many women wanted to try out a leadership role in class or found it helpful.

Furthermore, the survey results helped many leadership teams make more informed decisions about what retention and support strategies would be most helpful to their female students. For example, one of the colleges that put on a small get-together for female students in their technology program -- which none of the women were able to attend -- realized after seeing the survey results that their female students did not have time to attend face-to-face events and support groups outside of class. This same college took this new information into account and, as one of their retention strategies, invited a female role model to speak during the evening course that had the most female students enrolled. As this example demonstrates, a key outcome of the female student survey has been that the leadership teams at several colleges have taken the results and incorporated them into their strategic plans.

In spring 2010, the CalWomenTech Project once again surveyed female students in the targeted technology courses at all eight of the CalWomenTech colleges. The results from that survey are not yet available.

More Retention Strategies & Case Studies

For particular examples of additional retention strategies from the CalWomenTech Project, take a look at these college-specific case studies in the Proven Practices Collection:

• San Diego Mesa College Case Study
• Evergreen Valley College Case Study
• Las Positas College Case Study
• El Camino Open Lab Time Case Study

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Retention Tools for Your Program

An important part of the CalWomenTech Project is taking the successful retention resources that worked within the Project and disseminating them to educators across the country. Here are solutions you can use to recreate the CalWomenTech Project retention strategies and success at your school:

• WomenTech Educators Training -- You can experience the same training provided to the CalWomenTech colleges by bringing IWITTS to your school or by attending the training IWITTS holds in the San Francisco Bay Area several times a year.
• Proven Practices Collection -- A collection of journal articles, case studies and other resources on proven practices in recruiting and retaining women to technology.
• Learning Library -- Links to outside sources selling tools that teach students building block skills.
• Tools of the Trades Videos -- This video set, with accompanying instructor's guide, familiarizes students with tools in six different trades.
• SciGirls Videos -- These videos and activity guides make science colorful and fun with science for girls, by girls!
• PicoCricket Kits -- Engage your female students in math, science and engineering principles with tiny computers that can make things spin, light up, and play music

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The CalWomenTech Project is funded by The Program for Research on Gender in Science and Engineering from The National Science Foundation - Grant no. 0533564

 

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[1] Rosser, S.V. 1998. "Group work in science, engineering, and mathematics: Consequences of ignoring gender and race", College Teaching 46 (3): 82-88.