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A pair of researchers with the University of Massachusetts has found evidence that suggests women are more likely to continue to pursue a degree in engineering if they have a female mentor. Nilanjana Dasgupta, an instructor, and her Ph.D. student Tara Dennehy paired first-year female engineering majors with older mentors for a year and then looked at the impact mentoring had the decision to continue pursuing their degree as they moved into their second year. They have published their findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Far fewer women than men receive bachelor's degrees in the STEM fields (just 13 to 33 percent), despite women comprising approximately 56 percent of all students attending college in the United States. Dasgupta and Dennehy note that the disparity is most notable in engineering. They suggest the reason that women choose to drop out or to change majors is because many such environments are unfriendly, or even hostile to female students. Quite often, female students are made to feel as if they do not belong. They note also that some efforts have been made to make such environments friendlier, but thus far, little progress has been made. They wondered if female students in such fields might benefit from having a female mentor. To find out, they enlisted the assistance of 150 people (male and female) working as engineers to serve as mentors for 150 female engineering students during their freshman year. The students met with their mentor once a month and were interviewed by the research pair three times during their first year and then again, a year later.
The researchers found that the female students were much more likely to continue to pursue their engineering degree if they had a female mentor, but not if they had a male mentor (18 percent of them dropped out) or no mentor (11 percent dropped out). They report that all of the female students given a female mentor chose to continue with their major their second year. They also note that mentoring appeared to have a lasting impact, as most of those assigned female mentors reported plans to continue with their engineering degree into their third year.
Paper: Tara C. Dennehya and Nilanjana Dasgupta, Female peer mentors early in college increase women's positive academic experiences and retention in engineering, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2017). www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1613117114
Additional coverage at UMass, TheAtlantic, insidehighed.com
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 25 2017, @02:55AM (1 child)
"Even the ugly ones get loads of attention"
Eth, think about that.
Even as a young man, when sex was on my mind about 27 hours each day, there were times when I really didn't need or want the attention of females. I noted often that when I was seeking feminine company, I couldn't find a female. But, if I were on a mission of some sort, women came crawling out of the woodwork. Funny, but if you have places to go, things to see, and people to do, suddenly you become a chick magnet. And, every single chick is a distraction, pulling you away from accomplishing the mission.
Civilians don't think in terms of "mission", but surely you've had similar experiences. Something has to be done, and you are dedicated to getting it done - and some hot little baby doll wants to chat and flirt with you.
THAT is at least part of what the study covers. The little sweety wants to do Great Things in life, and while she is busy getting her education, here comes Ethanol Fueled to distract her from that mission.
And, it's much worse for women. Once distracted, the woman runs the risk of caring for one or more snot nosed little kids, each of whom is a far greater distraction than the bastard who distracted her in the first place.
Just think about it for awhile. It means nothing to you, to interrupt some chick's dreams of curing all the world's ills, or creating the cheapest, least polluting form of transportation ever. It means nothing. But, to her, it's her life's dream.
Empathize, at least a little, alright?
Yeah, chicks need mentors, no less than guys do. Almost all really successful guys had at least one mentor along the way to success. Chicks need at least as much attention, and maybe more. Just not your kind of attention!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @01:30PM
You, sir, are an all-American hero.