2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Fostering Community at the Graduate Level: One University’s Student-led Approach

Presented at Women in Engineering Division (WIED) Technical Session 7

The purpose of this paper is to identify the needs of engineering graduate women at an R1 university and propose a student-led approach to increase their sense of community and belonging. As recent reports indicate, women’s enrollment in engineering graduate programs increased by only 4 percent from 2014 to 2019. To increase retention, departments and universities often rely on a professional development driven approach to establish community. While useful, these efforts are misdirected because literature shows that women’s isolation and lack of sense of community, rather than lack of career preparedness, contribute to attrition from graduate programs. To best eradicate this isolation and lack of belonging among graduate women in engineering, we took a user-centered approach. Community-led, stakeholder-centric, participatory research is a stakeholder-owned means by which to elicit community member needs. This process translates into strategies that are developed by community members themselves to address those needs. We developed a pilot survey distributed to all graduate students in the College of Engineering at an R1 university to gauge need for community and student interest in creating a Graduate Women in Engineering group. Results from the survey indicated that students lacked community, and had an overwhelming desire to be involved in a graduate women in engineering group. As such, we felt compelled to form an official student organization for the engineering community, GradWIE. GradWIE welcomes people of all gender identities to support the personal and professional wellbeing of graduate students through peer support, the creation of safe spaces, social events, and diverse resources. In its first year, the organization has sponsored several community-building events, reaching over 150 students across all departments in the college. Through this work, GradWIE seeks to continue supporting graduate students by involving them directly in group and event development, providing a potential example for other universities.

Authors

Haroula M. Tzamaras Pennsylvania State University [biography]

Haroula is a 3rd year PhD candidate studying human factors at Penn State and is the current president of GradWIE.
Sierra Hicks
Gabriella M. Sallai http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3922-8112 Pennsylvania State University [biography]

Gaby Sallai is currently a graduate student in the Mechanical Engineering department at Penn State. She is working under Dr. Catherine Berdanier in the Engineering Cognitive Research Laboratory (ECRL) studying the experiences of engineering graduate students. She received her Bachelor's degree from Franklin & Marshall College in physics and women and gender studies.
Christine Mathilda Cummings
Lauren Elizabeth Dennis
Dr. Hannah Nolte Pennsylvania State University [biography]

Hannah Nolte has recently completed her doctoral degree in Industrial Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University specializing in human factors and ergonomics. Her research investigates the applicability of mindfulness interventions as a stress-management technique for engineering design to improve design outcomes and student well-being. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Physics and Psychological Science from Gustavus Adolphus College and earned her master’s degree in Industrial Engineering at Penn State by researching the impact of practica style assessments on first-year engineering student self-efficacy.
Andrea Mesa Restrepo
Dr. Cynthia Howard-Reed http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9449-2795 Pennsylvania State University [biography]

Dr. Cindy Howard Reed is an Assistant Teaching Professor and the Assistant Director of Student Research and Graduate Equity in the Center for Engineering Outreach and Inclusion at Penn State. In this role, she promotes opportunities for undergraduate students to experience research and supports students’ academic journeys through graduate school. Before coming to Penn State, Dr. Reed conducted indoor air quality and ventilation research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering at North Carolina State University and completed her graduate work at The University of Texas at Austin, where she received a Master’s degree in Environmental Health Engineering and a PhD in Civil Engineering.

Download paper (1.1 MB)

Are you a researcher? Would you like to cite this paper? Visit the ASEE document repository at peer.asee.org for more tools and easy citations.

» Download paper

« View session