Celeste Baine's Blog about Marketing Engineering Education

Webinar Description: Technicians, technologists, and engineers use knowledge, skills and the engineering method to make stuff - tools, structures, processes - to solve problems. They use available resources such as time, materials and labor to do so. As a group, females are more likely to want to use a tool to do something - solve a problem, make a product, streamline a chore - than to want to use the tool for its own sake. If women, underrepresented minorities, and persons with disabilities participated in the U.S. science, engineering, and technology workforce in parity with their percentages in the total workforce population, it would give America almost all the qualified workers it will need. Girls make great technicians, technologists and engineers! Women have a long history of using tools and materials to solve the problems of feeding, sheltering and clothing their families.

Join us on Oct 10 and learn effective strategies for recruiting women into technology programs, the major career motivators, examples of what technicians, technologists and engineers can do that might appeal to young girls, and some of the reasons that girls turn away from the field.

To prepare for the webinar, Mark Viquesney of MATEC Network, my host, asked me a few questions.

Celeste: Technology programs tend to attract the brightest students. The advantage for these students is that, because they are so bright, they can go into many different fields. The world is wide open for them so it’s up to technical colleges, schools and programs to show them why an engineering or technology career is better than any of their other choices.

Women want to know that their career will help others, improve society and/or make a difference. So suddenly, the marketing efforts at various colleges have to change their approach from:

The nuts and bolts required to create or design a product or technology = a better environment, enhanced healthcare, a better life, etc.

In other words, the marketing needs to focus on the big picture instead of the immediate solution. The message that needs to be conveyed is: by pursuing this technology or engineering degree you will make a difference in the world. This is challenging because making a difference is subjective and many students may not know yet what makes them have an “ah ha” moment.

Mark: Are more women getting into technical programs then before? Why do you think that is?

Celeste: According to “Inside Higher Ed” on August 7, 2007, women are enrolling in engineering and technology programs at a much higher rate than previously found. Fields such as biomedical engineering or technology and environmental engineering or technology show the highest increases. When you study the numbers, many of the career tracks that attract girls are multidisciplinary.

Celeste: Not many students know their career path at 16, 19 or even 21. One of the easiest strategies for attracting women is to broaden the outcome of their degree. Women want to know that they have choices. Diverse and plentiful opportunities exist for the educated non-mainstream technologist or engineer with a good understanding of scientific and technical subjects. Highlighting that a degree in technology or engineering means that, in addition to a great career as a technologist or engineer, they can also be a writer, teacher, politician, business person, doctor, or lawyer. These professions require analytical, integrative, and problem-solving abilities, all of which are part of a technology education. Thus, a technology degree offers an ideal undergraduate education for living and working in today’s technologically dependent society.

From Mark Wallace - High Point Regional High School in Sussex, NJ has offered a Women in Engineering Design Technology course for seven years. We average 17 students each year. Forty percent stay in our Technological Studies Department, seniors would not be able to stay. Our last five Technology Student Association Presidents have started in the WIE course. The girls have won state engineering competitive events and placed in the top 6 Nation wide. It's working! Why don't more students offer single gender classes when there is a need like females in Engineering? We do offer a similar course for anyone which was the legal issue we had to meet in order to offer this to our female students. I even have one grad of WIE studying to be a technology Ed. teacher and hope to hire her soon.

Technology education programs have turned many students onto engineering careers. This is not our goal, we want to improve technological literacy for every student but it is a great side affect.
Posted on October 7, 2008 at 6:02 am PST

Celeste Baine's thoughts, perceptions and ideas about marketing engineering education.

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