Social Capital From Professional Engineering Organizations and the Persistence of Women and Underrepresented Minority Undergraduates

Abstract

Professional engineering organizations (PEOs) have the potential to provide women and underrepresented and minoritized (URM) students with social capital (i.e., resources gained from relationships) that aids their persistence in their engineering undergraduate programs and into the workforce. We hypothesize that women and URM students engineering students who participate in PEOs are more likely to persist in their engineering major and that PEOs contribute to their persistence by providing them access to insider information that supports their persistence. Each year for five years we administered surveys with closed- and open-ended items to examine the association between participating in PEOs and the persistence of a cohort of engineering majors from 11 diverse universities. We used logistic regression and thematic analysis to analyze the data. URM students who participated in PEOs and other engineering related activities were more likely to persist to the second year than URM students who did not (adjusted odds ratio = 2.18, CI: 1.09, 4.37). Students reported that PEOs contributed to their persistence by enabling them to network, reduce gender and race/ethnic isolation, and access professional resources. URM students should be encouraged to participate in PEOs beginning in their first year to increase their integration in their major, which we have found to increase their persistence.

The Influence of Professional Engineering Organizations on Women and Underrepresented Minority Students’ Fit

“…Studies that examine the intersection of STEM department culture, women and URM student values, and social capital from alters who can help mitigate dissonance between department culture and women and URM student values offer insight into the structural factors shaping engineering persistence. Our research shows that women and URM students benefit from access to resources and advice from alters in students' social networks (i.e., network-based social capital), as well as alters in the organizations in which they participate (i.e., participatory social capital) (Skvoretz et al, 2020;Campbell-Montalvo et al, 2021;Puccia et al, 2021;Smith et al, 2021). For example, Puccia et al (2021) identified the role network-based social capital garnered from parents' advice played in students' declaration and persistence in their engineering majors.…”

“…Students can access various resources based on the PEOs they choose to join and through the department of their major. Alters from PEOs, who may not be in the individual's social network and might be less socially proximal, may often offer advice about classes and career-related skills (Smith et al, 2021).…”

“…Participatory social capital refers to advice from people students meet by participating in STEM professional societies, such as Professional Engineering Organizations (PEOs), including those that are gender-focused (i.e., Society of Women Engineers [SWE]) or race/ethnicity-focused (i.e., National Society of Black Engineers [NSBE] or the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers [SHPE]). Researchers have reported the value of PEOs to women and URM students, highlighting the role that participation in PEOs plays in reducing their feelings of isolation due to being numerical minorities (Espinosa, 2011;Ong et al, 2018;Campbell-Montalvo et al, 2021;Smith et al, 2021), and increasing URM students' persistence in their program (Smith et al, 2021). In our previous work, we analyzed two rounds of survey responses from ∼2,186 engineering students, in which half of the participants engaged in PEOs (Smith et al, 2021).…”

“…Researchers have reported the value of PEOs to women and URM students, highlighting the role that participation in PEOs plays in reducing their feelings of isolation due to being numerical minorities (Espinosa, 2011;Ong et al, 2018;Campbell-Montalvo et al, 2021;Smith et al, 2021), and increasing URM students' persistence in their program (Smith et al, 2021). In our previous work, we analyzed two rounds of survey responses from ∼2,186 engineering students, in which half of the participants engaged in PEOs (Smith et al, 2021). We found that Black and Latinx students who participated in race/ethnicity-focused PEOs (such as NSBE or SHPE) were more likely to persist in their engineering program (i.e., still be enrolled) in their second year than Black and Latinx students who did not participate in such organizations.…”

“…Similarly, in a previous study using interviews with 44 diverse engineering juniors and seniors, the majority of women and URM students believed that their connections through their memberships in professional societies contributed to their persistence by providing resources such as free tutoring and information about professors' teaching and exam styles (Borman, et al, 2010;Chanderbhan-Forde et al, 2012). The documented impacts of participatory social capital are relevant to informing research and structural approaches aimed at broadening participation in STEM, particularly for Black engineering students who, when compared to women and Latinx students, had the highest rates of involvement in gender-or race/ethnicity-focused PEOs (Smith et al, 2021) and who experience some of the worst STEM department climates (Campbell-Montalvo et al, 2021).…”