Liberian Female Engineering Students Persisting in Engineering: A Qualitative Study

Sara Rimersrimer@umich.edu

University of Michigan Doctoral Student Department of Civil and Environmental EngineeringGraduate Society of Women Engineers Co-Director

Graduate Certificate in Engineering Education Research

My objectives for this talk:

➢ Provide background information about Liberia,

➢ particularly, the state of undergraduate, engineering female students in Liberia

➢ Present overview of EHELD Summer Start program

➢ Give a quick overview of engineering education research

➢ Share some preliminary results

Liberia is in the process of rebuilding following over a decade long civil war.

Women comprise less than 5% of the engineering students at University of Liberia and face harassment on day to day basis.

“...transactional sex, or 'sex for grades,' and sexual intimidation from teachers and faculty was a major theme across all the universities”

“...rape, fear of, sexual harassment and assault were commonly reported experiences among female students today”

“...women experience gendered forms of exclusion and intimidation when participating in political groups.”

“...beyond facing risks on their campuses, students fear and experience insecurities when traveling to and from campus, especially at night.”

“...local level duty bearers, including university authorities, expressed limited recognition and responsibility for many safety risks women faced.”

From ActionAid's “Women and the city: Examining the gender impact of violence and urbanization” (2011):

The EHELD grant has a particular emphasis on increasing the amount of women in engineering.

The Excellence in Higher Education for Liberian Development (EHELD) project is a USAID-funded 5-year grant to improve the agriculture and engineering sectors of Liberia

The University of Michigan's College of Engineering is a subcontractor on the grant with a focus on providing summer programs for engineering and agriculture students, namely Summer Start.

Summer Start program has been implemented the past three summers.

Three objectives of the program:

1.To better prepare outstanding engineering and agriculture students for the coming school year

2.To make the students more excited about their careers in engineering and agriculture

3.To give students necessary experiences and skills they do not currently receive at their university

Half of the participants at the UM CoE-implemented Summer Start are women.

➢ Four-week residential➢ 80 student participants➢ Half engineering, half agriculture➢ Incoming freshmen and

sophomores➢ Remedial courses in morning

(physics, math, english)➢ Labs in afternoon (engineering

design lab, computer lab)➢ Life skills course

Engineering education is a combination of social research and engineering

Social science (e.g. psychology, sociology, anthropology, science, and philosophy)

Educational research

Engineering education research

Engineering research

Engineering education research is more than “how to teach” and curriculum development.

● It is about how students learn engineering● Quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods● Various conceptual framework

Examples:

Disciplinary thinking development

Learner-centered approaches

Community in the classroom

Assessment development

Qualitative research serves as a compliment to quantitative research.

● Less use of positivist or postpositivist perspectives (i.e. there exists an objective truth)

● Capturing the individual’s point of view

● Examining the constraints of everyday life

● Securing rich descriptions.

Denzin and Lincoln (2005)

Qualitative research tends to have the following characteristics:

Research questions:

What are the experiences of female Liberian students studying engineering?

How does Summer Start affect Liberian female student perceptions of and motivations to persist in

engineering, and planned approaches to their continued education?

Semi-structured interviews with the female students was primary method to this study.

Qualitative, exploratory study

Conceptual framework grounded in motivational theory

Self-efficacy

Expectancy/Value theory

Focused on gathering rich descriptions from the students

Preliminary results● Trailblazers in Liberia for their field

● Major interest in geology

● Fathers have significant influence in motivation to study engineering

● While Summer Start is a first step for the female students:

Harassment is still pervasive

Very few “safe” men

Role models are minimal

Other women are sometimes their largest barriers

Women supporting each other and organizing together is not necessarily “safe”

Questions?