2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

There have been national calls to increase the representation of historically excluded groups, including women and students of color, in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Recent data also highlights that different fields have made differential progress in achieving equity and parity in their disciplines. In this work, we study an institutional dataset to identify whether chemical engineering has achieved gender parity in degree attainment at a large land-grant institution. We find that women are less likely than men to enroll in chemical engineering in their first semester of university and are also less likely to receive chemical engineering degrees, though the gap in degree attainment is not entirely explained by initial interest in chemical engineering. We find that women who enroll in Mass and Energy Balances (MEB) receive slightly lower grades than men with similar first-year GPAs, but these women persist through the rest of the chemical engineering curriculum at similar rates to men who receive the same grades in MEB. These quantitative measures thus identify three critical junctures affecting the gender gap in opportunities to pursue chemical engineering careers: (1) initial aspiration to study chemical engineering, (2) experience in the first-year engineering curriculum, and (3) challenges within foundational courses within the major itself. The results then suggest that a holistic approach to recruiting and supporting women within chemical engineering is needed, which may include interventions such as high school outreach programs, first-year mentoring programs, more equitable assessment methods, and cultural change within the department itself.