This paper written in the third year of a five year project for presentation at the 2009 WEPAN Conference includes promising early CalWomenTech Project results, sample strategies, and project resources for educators. CalWomenTech Project community colleges that implemented project recruitment strategies within the recommended timeline had an increase in enrollment of women in their targeted technology programs of 10 to 15 percentage points in just over a year. Colleges that implemented the retention strategies saw increases in both female and male retention, and one college saw their retention of women go from 81% to 100% in a little over a year.

This paper from the ASEE 2010 Conference shares CalWomenTech Project results, strategies, resources, and survey responses from female students in STEM programs where they are underrepresented. Two community college technology programs that implemented recruitment strategies within recommended timelines increased enrollment of female students from 18% to 30% and 35% to 50% respectively. Retention strategies implemented by CalWomenTech colleges also led to significant increases in completion rates of not only women, but also men, in several technology programs. One college that went from a female completion rate of 81% to 100% in 15 months also saw an increase of over 20% in male completion.

What retention and support strategies do women students in STEM courses find most helpful? In the third year of the CalWomenTech Project, IWITTS collected 60 survey responses from female students in technology courses in which they were underrepresented at seven California community colleges to find out. This paper from the WEPAN 2010 Conference publishes results from that survey and discusses how the colleges used those results to choose which retention strategies to implement.

This report from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research includes profiles of seven projects that have successfully worked to recruit and/or retain female students in community college STEM programs, including IWITTS’s CalWomenTech Project. The report highlights proven strategies from successful programs, reviews the current literature on recruiting/retaining female STEM students, and recommends institutional and broader policy changes for increasing the number of women completing community college STEM degrees. One of the key research-based recommendations of the report is to recruit women into STEM programs by emphasizing the economic value of careers in STEM fields.

Five years after introducing three key recruitment and retention strategies, women now make up around 42% of Harvey Mudd College's computer science program. In this Google Tech Talk video, Christine Alvarado shares the three practices Harvey Mudd College implemented to increase the number of women in their CS program: 1) new curriculum for CS1, 2) scholarship trips for female freshman to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computer Science, and 3) hands-on research projects for female sophomore CS students.

Watch Christine Alvarado's Google Tech Talk video on YouTube.

Between 2006 and 2010, the percentage of women in the College of Engineering rose from 27.7% to 33.4% at Cornell University and the graduation rate for women from the College of Engineering increased from 75.5% to 82.6%. The key areas of focus for the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation at Cornell University included summer research programs, a scholars community for engineering students, and a series of recruitment initiatives and events.

To reduce isolation, the literature recommends grouping two or more female or minority students together when group work is performed in courses where they are underrepresented, but it can be time consuming for instructors to hand select ideal groups. GroupEng – an open-source program available to all educators – was created to make it easy for instructors to use variables such as gender, race, student performance (e.g. early test scores), and student interests to auto generate balanced groups in minutes. This paper by the creators of GroupEng talks about the research behind the program, compares the use of GroupEng with hand selected groups in real courses, and explains how any instructor can use the program in their STEM course.

CAEE conducted multi-year studies with over 5,400 students at more than 20 universities, and made sure to oversample for gender and race in order to identify ways to increase diversity in engineering. Section 2.9 of this report focuses on “Summarizing Results about Diversity” and shows how female engineering students tend to approach design differently from male students and report less confidence and course preparation to do design. According to this study, mentors were also more likely to influence female students to study engineering than male students.

Download a PDF of the full report from CAEE.

This guide from Catalyst includes results from surveys and interviews with change agents and businessmen on ways to get support from men and research-based recommendations for how to engage men in efforts to increase diversity. It also includes strategies used by employers such as Volvo and Ernst and Young to increase involvement of women in the companies.

Download a PDF of the full guide from Catalyst.

This case study from the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) explains how instructors can implement pair programming in their computing courses, and shares how the University of California Santa Cruz used pair programming assignments to increase the retention of both female and male students.

Read the full case study on the NCWIT website.

A cross-sectional survey of 798 high school science students showed that although female students may respond better to a female teacher’s classroom management, build reciprocal trust more with female teachers, and be more open to the pressure to learn from female teachers, in most instances the gender of the science teacher did not make a significant difference to female (or male) students. The researchers conclude that it's important for teachers to know about these differences, but do not recommend that female students should be taught only by female science teachers.

Download the article from the International Journal of Gender, Science and Technology.

Seven women who persisted in STEM careers after participating in a single-sex living and learning community (LLC) for women in STEM were interviewed to see how the LLC impacted their decisions. The results show that the LLC positively affected their persistence.

Download the article from the International Journal of Gender, Science and Technology.

Over 380 female undergraduate engineering and technology students were surveyed on eight categories including demographics, role models, and scenarios that might make a female student more comfortable studying engineering. One important result from the survey is that female students who had four to six female professors were more likely to report having an educational or career role model (55.8%) compared to those who had only one to three female professors (50.7%) or no female professors (46.0%).

Presented at the 2011 ASEE Conference, this paper shares the CalWomenTech Project model and strategies -- many requiring minimal costs and time commitments -- that resulted in increases of female students in technology programs and in improved completion rates for both female and male students. The CalWomenTech Project -- funded and highlighted by the National Science Foundation -- assisted technology programs at eight California two-year colleges in recruiting and retaining more women during an economic recession and state budget crisis that forced the California community college system to cut hundreds of millions of dollars.

Over 46% of women who participated in pair programming in an introductory undergraduate computer science course declared a computer science related major compared to 11% of women who worked independently. Pair programming also resulted in a 24% increase in self-reported confidence for female students, and a 15% increase for male students. This paper compares the retention, major selection, confidence level, and performance ability of undergraduate female and male students who experienced pair programming with a control group that worked independently.

Read "Pair Programming Improves Student Retention, Confidence, and Program Quality" on the University of California eScholarship website.

Why do women leave the science pipeline? This guide recommends concrete strategies to keep female college students coming back to science classes.

Preliminary data from an NSF study of universities identifies four common factors across institutions that correlate with high retention rates of women in engineering programs. This poster displays the findings.

Lori Johnson, President of Ladies Start Your Engines, an automotive class for women, gives your students tips for developing professional relationships with men in automotive technology. She also advises women on how to advance their careers through industry networking and setting clear professional goals.

Please click here to listen to the podcast.

This long-term study of more than 50 undergraduate engineering programs examined women's experiences and persistence. Discover the importance of Women in Engineering programs on campus and other tools to increase retention rates of women.

This case study describes the results of using an easy-to-follow 3-step systematic framework that empowers students by enhancing their ability to learn principles and concepts.