Good resources for improving more diverse recruitment in STEM?

June 1, 2017 7:26 AM

I work in a university engineering department. Like all of our competitors we have a commitment to recruiting more diversely and particularly at trying to improve the number of women we recruit at UG level. We do better than average but I would like to think about how we aggressively move beyond this. I am looking for best practice on all elements of the recruitment process. What has succeeded at your university? Have you seen any solid material on this?

Bonus points, how to make the teaching environment as positive as it can be post recruitment?

posted by biffa to Education (11 answers total)

The #1 thing that I've seen help? Make hiring women faculty members a priority. Among some (old white male) faculty, this leads to talk of "lowering the standards," but the simple fact is that, even in "hot areas," it's a buyers market. There are high-quality candidates of both genders, even in areas such as engineering. If you make hiring women an explicit priority, it will help all the way down.
posted by Betelgeuse at 8:12 AM on June 1, 2017 [6 favorites]

It's worth saying that hiring women as faculty members addresses both points: it helps with student recruitment and retention.
posted by Betelgeuse at 8:13 AM on June 1, 2017 [6 favorites]

Best answer: A great example would probably be the success Harvey Mudd has had with their CS course.
posted by Joh at 8:25 AM on June 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

Harvey Mudd has made amazing progress getting more women graduating with computer science degrees. They made changes to their curriculum, hiring, and teaching styles to get there. You may want to look into the BRAID initiative

As a woman who did an engineering undergrad, it is amazing how much subtle and not subtle classroom (and out of classroom) bias is allowed to go unchecked because professors have no one to correct them. Unless you correct that, you'll lose female students and faculty at every level.
posted by oryelle at 8:26 AM on June 1, 2017 [5 favorites]

Best answer: + Ask the women who are already there. [And the ones who dropped out.]
+ Give us money! Earmark scholarships & travel funds for women, POC & LGBTQ folks.
+ Make everyone sign a no-harassment policy at the beginning of term. Actually enforce it. Don't tolerate hazing, machismo posturing or loudmouth showing-off in class.
+ Lots of women start STEM later than their male peers, so reduce the learning headwind – offer homework clubs, office hours that are truly open, mentorship buddies, pair programming, team projects, intro catch-up courses, etc. Discourage the "lone wolf genius" stereotype.
+ Have women's only clubs & events (open to queer/trans folks as well, there won't be enough of us to have our own groups).
+ Strive for 1:1 ratio women to men for guest speakers, panels, etc. Same goes for promo material of any sort. Encourage teachers to alternate pronouns in classroom examples.
+ Make the classrooms friendly. Air. Sunshine. Plants. Color. Not everyone wants to work in a sterile underground box. Healthy snacks and tea/coffee, not junk food and VISO.
+ Grade blind to reduce gender bias.
+ Track your small numbers. If your class is 30% women but you're only getting 10% engagement in a contest, figure out why.
+ Skip the word "female." It's degrading and MRAs use it. Just stop.
+ If you recruit non-traditional students: childcare, advance notice for scheduling. Remember mommas have less time, do more housework and way more emotional labor. So help them out.
+ STEM kids often work late. Is it safe for women to get home?
+ Nerd activities can be coded differently for women. Eg: recruit knitters, anime geeks & psych majors

Once I had a computer science professor who prided himself on his feminist virtue. He was also quite the name dropper. So I started tallying pronouns during his monologues. After a week of hashmarks, we were at 87% men to 13% women (no queers or third genders to speak of). The breakdown ran like so: famous STEM people he had met, former students he had taught, and imaginary problem set LARPers. Trouble is, there aren't that many women in C.S., so upwards of 95% of his real world characters were men. And guess who always took "tech support" or "hapless customer" roles in his funny examples?

Which goes to show, to achieve true pronoun parity nearly *all* theoretical roles would have to be taken by women.
Ugly real world is always pressing in.
posted by fritillary at 8:34 AM on June 1, 2017 [10 favorites]

From my undergrad experience: don't constantly tell me how progressive you are for letting me in. I always knew I was the only woman in class, talking about that in class gets old. From my grad school experience: listen when I say it's a hostile environment instead of talking among your (old white men) club about how you don't understand why women keep dropping out.
posted by Valancy Rachel at 8:46 AM on June 1, 2017 [3 favorites]

Recruiting efforts often struggle because the pipeline is small at the level of recruiting and many programs are fighting over a small group of people.

I would encourage your institution to support outreach initiatives aimed at growing the pipeline from below, e.g. STEM events for elementary and middle school aged girls. It's not like you're going to turn all of those girls into engineers and recoup them as recruits X years in the future, but you capture the short term benefits of sending a message that you are serious about diversity and increase your likelihood of attracting women to your program (on top of the generally very positive benefit to society).
posted by telegraph at 9:49 AM on June 1, 2017 [3 favorites]

Hi
Female POC here, engineer and professor at the university level. No one tells you that after getting into college, graduating, getting into grad school, graduating, earning a Ph.D. and getting a job as an engineering professor (with tenure) will lead you to a very, very, lonely place. I would not advise anyone to that the path I've taken.
But, if you insist, I have two bits of advice.

1. Provide support in the form of a "safe" place on campus. I recall as an UG in the 1970's the only thing that got me through the day was dropping into the "Minority Programs" office, not for scholarships, just a place I could feel safe, hang out between classes and not have to smile when I did not feel like it. Do not underestimate how hard this journey is, once you recruit a student, check in with them, the job is not over once they have been admitted.
2. Ask your "diverse" students to help you in recruiting from their old high schools etc.

I'm happy to help, contact me via pm if you want.
posted by drthom at 1:26 PM on June 1, 2017 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks for the feedback so far. It was reading about the Mudd case that made me think I should ask the question in here. The link to BRAID looks useful for looking into things more (I didn't make clear, I am in the UK so haven't come across it before).

There are some things also recommended here that we are trying to do, some that sound like very good ideas that we may be able to do with some application (and badgering) and some we can try and get buy-in for further up the chain. Hopefully we can make some positive changes.

drthom, thanks for the offer, I will drop you a line after my marking is done if that is ok?
posted by biffa at 3:30 PM on June 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

My university has created a partnership with some of the local middle and high schools both to make sure already-interested students know about our programs and think to apply, and to increase interest/engagement to start with.

I would also say that generally, consider having some real training and policies around sexual harassment, rather than just an online training or having people sign a form. At most of the universities I've worked, the "training" around sexual harassment involves taking a 30-60 minute online reading + quiz with questions like "Is it okay to coerce someone into sex for a good grade? Pick yes or no!"

In contrast, one university I worked at had both a mandatory training from someone who actually specialized in Title IX and harassment issues, and had very strong policies (which were basically, no relationships between professors and students who might even slightly possibly end up in their department/classes now or at any point in the future, period). Some places have this ridiculous shiftiness around "Oh, maybe it's true love and we'll just have someone else grade the homework and write evaluations!" which just leads to a super toxic environment. So I would recommend both really strong policies about sexual/romantic relationships where there is any teacher-student relationship, as well as having real, in-person training around sexual harassment that covers not only "Don't rape people" but also classroom environment, etc.
posted by rainbowbrite at 4:38 PM on June 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

I would encourage mentoring within the student body to encourage retention, as well as among the alumni. Retention and jobs post college are two things that will increase students wanting to come to your school - its better though if the students and graduates themselves are touting it, rather than the school.
posted by Toddles at 8:43 PM on June 1, 2017 [1 favorite]