Evaluating the effectiveness of gender equity training in engineering summer workshops with pre-college teachers and counselors

The WISE Investments (WI) Program is a three-year NSF project designed to encourage young women to pursue engineering and related careers. A major component of this grant is to provide two two-week summer professional development workshops that introduce middle school, high school, and community college teachers and guidance counselors to engineering. These educators are responsible for integrating what they have learned in the engineering workshops by using related activities in their mathematics and science curricula. The counselors include applied math and science in their career counseling and implement an outreach program to encourage students to consider a major in engineering. The engineering workshops have provided instruction to 90 pre-college educators from the local community colleges, middle schools, and high schools. To evaluate the short-term effectiveness of the professional development workshops, assessment instruments were used to provide feedback and strengthen instruction. One part of this formative process included an objective measure related to gender equity. The educators were asked to complete a questionnaire prior to the workshop to assess their understanding of gender issues in engineering, science, mathematics, and technology. The same instrument was administered after completing eight engineering labs. The paper will present a comparison of the summer 1999 and summer 2000 data to illustrate the need for gender equity programs in the middle schools, high schools, and community colleges.