(RES) Assessing Women in Engineering Programs: Developing Exportable Tools for Success.

该项目将为全国的“女性参与工程”项目开发标准化的、可出口的和可比较的评估工具和模型，从而使她们能够评估其项目的活动，并最终为做出明智的评估提供数据。为了实现这一目标，密苏里大学和宾夕法尼亚州立大学的主要研究人员将在三年的时间内与各自机构的WIE项目以及伦斯勒理工学院、佐治亚理工学院和德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校的三个合作项目一起工作。这五个项目共同代表了各种私营和公共机构、WIE主任多年的经验和学生群体的特点，研究人员将试点、修订、实施、进行初步数据分析，并传播易于获取、可靠和有效的评估工具。形成性评价的原则将适用于所有的仪器和产品。所有机构都将使用同一套工具，从而使它们除了各自机构的数据外，还可以获得强大的基准数据。之前的一个项目，“女性在大学工程项目中的经历”（WECE），试图通过研究影响女性对工程专业满意度的大学环境、事件和支持项目，以及她们坚持或离开这些专业的决定，来描述影响女学生经历和决定的因素。与WECE的宏观层面和以学生为中心相比，该提案的目标受众是WIE的董事，他们关注的是WIE的项目，而不是学生。美国各地的工程项目中的女性是我们国家对工程专业中需要更多女性的反应的重要组成部分。全国大约有50个WIE项目。一半的人表示对这一努力感兴趣。世界卫生组织主任将受益于现成的评估工具，这些工具将使他们能够收集项目数据，评估这些项目，并决定如何修改项目和/或重新分配有限的资源，以最大限度地提高项目的整体效率。这些文书的数据也将为行政人员、咨询委员会和可能的供资机构提供确凿的证据。最后，由于这些工具将在全国范围内可用，各项目将有机会利用强大的基准数据进行决策过程。这个项目为在工程领域招募和留住女性的全国运动提供了合乎逻辑的下一步。

This project will develop standardized, exportable and comparable assessment instruments and models for Women In Engineering (WIE) programs nationwide, thus allowing them to assess their program's activities and ultimately provide data for making well-informed evaluations. To accomplish this goal, the principal investigators at the University of Missouri and Penn State University will work over a three-year period with their institutions' WIE programs and three cooperating programs at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Georgia Tech, and University of Texas at Austin. With these five programs that collectively represent a variety of private and public, years of experience for WIE directors and student body characteristics, the investigators will pilot, revise, implement, conduct preliminary data analysis and disseminate easy-to-access, reliable and valid assessment instruments. The principles of formative evaluation will be applied to all instruments and products. All institutions will use the same set of instruments, thus allowing them to have access to powerful benchmarking data in addition to the data from each of their respective institutions.A prior project, the Women's Experience in College Engineering Project (WECE) sought to characterize the factors that influence women students' experiences and decisions by studying college environments, events and support programs that affect women's satisfaction with their engineering major, and their decisions to persist or leave these majors. In contrast to WECE's macro-level and student focus, this proposal's target audience is WIE directors, with a focus on WIE programs, not students.Women in Engineering programs around the United States are a crucial part of our country's response to the need for more women in engineering professions. There are about 50 WIE programs nationwide. Half have expressed interest in this effort. WIE directors will benefit by having ready-made assessment tools that will allow them to collect data on programs, evaluate these programs, and make decisions on how to revise programs and / or redistribute limited resources to maximize overall program effectiveness. Data from these instruments will also provide substantiated evidence for administrators, advisory boards and potential funding agencies. Finally, because these instruments will be available nationwide, programs will have the opportunity to take advantage of powerful benchmarking data for their decision-making processes.This project provides the next logical step in the national movement to recruit and retain women in engineering.