Women in Industrial Engineering: Stereotypes, Persistence ... · other engineering disciplines. Combining three sources of data: (1) a large quantitative data set of over 70,000 students

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Journal of Engineering EducationApril 2012, Vol. 101, No. 2, pp. 288–318

© 2012 ASEE. http://www.jee.org

Women in Industrial Engineering: Stereotypes, Persistence, and Perspectives

CATHERINE E. BRAWNER, MICHELLE M. CAMACHOa, SUSAN M. LORDa,RUSSELL A. LONGb, AND MATTHEW W. OHLANDb

Research Triangle Educational Consultants, University of San Diegoa, Purdue Universityb

BACKGROUND

Industrial engineering (IE) draws in and graduates women at among the highest rates comparedwith most engineering majors in the U.S. Popular stereotypes suggest this is because IE is “easier”than other engineering majors.

PURPOSE (HYPOTHESIS)This research interrogates prevailing assumptions about industrial engineering to explore why undergradu-ate women are drawn to industrial engineering over other engineering majors.

DESIGN/METHODS

Our mixed method approach used three sources of data. Quantitative analyses of a large, longitudinaldataset allowed us to draw empirical generalizations about academic performance, attraction to, and per-sistence within industrial engineering among men and women. We triangulated this with qualitative focusgroup data among women majoring in IE. Finally, we used content analysis of university IE Web sites tounderstand context and discourse.

RESULTS

In our dataset, industrial engineering is the only engineering major that gains women and men from thethird semester through six-year graduation and among all race-gender combinations (except Black men).Women in focus groups reveal that they are drawn to IE for a myriad of social factors including: warmth,flexibility, a sense it is more feminine, and career opportunities, among others. Content analysis of Websites reveals that IE emphasizes collegiality and leadership opportunities as intrinsic to the discipline.

CONCLUSIONS

Using a social capital framework, we showed that the context of IE, including prevailing norms and possi-bilities for networking, promotes ideologies of success that lead to greater attraction to and persistencewithin the major.

KEYWORDS

industrial engineering, social capital, women

INTRODUCTION

Industrial engineering (IE) is an enigma among engineering majors. In this study ofmultiple universities, it draws in more students at every semester than other engineeringmajors, and it also graduates more women than any other. Thus, it has been described as a“Pocket of Success” in engineering (Lord et al., 2008). In this paper, we apply a mixed-methods approach to examine the characteristics and experiences of women majoring in

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industrial engineering. Using constant comparative analysis, a qualitative technique where-by we compare students’ responses to explore and develop common themes to examine ourdata (Corbin & Strauss 2008), we theorize that there is something different, perhaps evenspecial, about industrial engineering that makes it more attractive to women than mostother engineering disciplines. Combining three sources of data: (1) a large quantitativedata set of over 70,000 students at 8 institutions, (2) focus groups with women industrialengineering majors at three of those institutions, and (3) content analysis of industrial en-gineering Web sites from those institutions, we show that industrial engineering has themost women graduates of any engineering field, communicates to potential students in amanner that emphasizes inclusivity, and that the women have internalized that message intheir descriptions of the department. We focus here on women, who comprise more than36% of the industrial engineering graduates in our data set, compared with only 22% of en-gineering graduates overall. This aligns with National Science Foundation (NSF) data thatshow that women represent 32% of all IE graduates in the U.S. but only 20% of all engi-neering graduates (NSF, 2008 tab 5-4; NSF, 2008 tab 5-5). Our focus group data andWeb site analysis provide a qualitative context for understanding what attracts women toIE and frame their experiences more broadly within the field. This multi-method ap-proach contributes nuance to our understandings of women’s successes in IE.

We note that Industrial Engineering is also referred to as Industrial and Systems Engi-neering at some schools. Throughout this paper, we will refer to the discipline simply as in-dustrial engineering or IE.

This analysis is part of a long-term study to explore how climate and pedagogy affectthe persistence of women in undergraduate engineering programs via a longitudinal,multi-institutional, and multivariate study. Specifically, the larger project examines the re-search questions “How does the persistence of women engineering students vary by race,engineering major, and institution? and Can pockets of success be identified?” Industrialengineering was identified as a pocket of success. We explore the social conditions of IEthat make it gain students and particularly women from third semester to graduation andwe ask what it is about IE that makes it different from other engineering disciplines. Is IEattractive simply because it is considered easier than other engineering disciplines or is itbecause of a different value system that has evolved in the discipline that makes it attractiveto both women and men?

LITERATURE REVIEW

Popular stereotypes circulating among engineers suggest that industrial engineering is“easier” than other engineering majors and that industrial engineering majors are “imagi-nary engineers” (Foor & Walden, 2009; Trytten et al., 2004). While these ideologies mayserve to devalue and delegitimize the educational arena of industrial engineering, how isthis devaluation related to the historical sex segregation within engineering? Specifically,does IE actively market itself in a way that recruits more women, and does this result instereotyping the field as “imaginary” or “easy”? Or can the stereotypical devaluation of IEbe attributed to the fact that more women are attracted to, and subsequently graduatefrom, this field?

History of Industrial EngineeringThe Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE) defines industrial engineering (IE) as:

[C]oncerned with the design, improvement and installation of integrated systemsof people, materials, equipment, and energy. It draws upon specialized knowledgeand skill in the mathematical, physical, and social sciences together with theprinciples and methods of engineering analysis and design to specify, predict, andevaluate the results to be obtained from such systems. (History of IIE, 2010)

Practitioners also describe IE as the study of:

[H]uman-centered engineered systems. This was the basis of our profession at itsorigin, and, although the form of the study has evolved, it is the basis of ourprofession today…. As other engineers foster advances through innovative newtechnologies, industrial engineers deal with those technologies in theirimplementation and use. (Kimbler, 1995)

Scholarship by historians of science and technology suggest that the context, case histo-ry, and historical narrative need to be examined within the systems and networks producedby social actors and their organizations (Hughes, 1986); conceptualizations of industrialengineering are similarly produced. From its beginnings, industrial engineering has tran-scended boundaries of disciplines and content. Pioneers in industrial engineering camefrom a variety of backgrounds including psychology, mathematics, engineering, and man-agement and include Frederick W. Taylor, Charles Babbage, Henry R. Towne, HenryGantt, Frank, Gilbreth, and Lillian Gilbreth. IE continues to explicitly include the con-nection between people and technology as part of the definition of the discipline. Frankand Lillian Gilbreth are credited with bringing this human element to the forefront in thestudy of work flow.

It is especially interesting that Lillian Gilbreth, the first person to earn a Ph.D. in in-dustrial psychology in the U.S. and mother of 12 children, played such a key role in the de-velopment of the field of IE at a time when there were virtually no women in engineeringand those few were considered oddities or “engineeresses” (Bix, 2004). The Gilbreths pub-lished widely, yet several books listed only Frank Gilbreth as the author likely because atthat time, including a female author was believed to detract from the credibility of thework. After Frank’s death, Lillian continued to work in industrial engineering and was rec-ognized with many awards. Dubbed the “First Lady of Engineering,” in 1965 LillianGilbreth was the first woman elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE),one of the highest honors bestowed on engineers in the U.S. (Graham, 1998). This historyframes current IE programs.

The social implications of a “human-centered” engineering system allude to the co-production of gendered ideologies and engineering.

Since gender is intricately interwoven with engineering, as it is with any othersocial institution, gender and engineering are co-produced or co-constructed. Forexample, the nerd stereotype is of men who are passionate about technology but a-social; the fact that these two are posited as mutually exclusive – to be technical isto be not-social - is one of the more powerful symbolic ways in which engineeringappears gender inauthentic for women, given the strong association ofwomen/femininities with caring about people. (Faulkner, 2007, p. 334)

While engineering is a heterogeneous practice, scholars have characterized the historyof its curriculum as rigid (Hacker, 1989). The theories presented by feminist technologystudies examine the “easy-hard” binary and the social construction of what it means for a

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discipline to be labeled “hard.” What is characterized as hard often translates into techni-cal. While engineering practice in general contains elements of both technical and social,the technical is normative, while the social is less visible—these distinctions map onto thedualism of technology as masculine and sociality as feminine (Faulkner, 2000, 2007). Thisdualism between the technical and social is at the heart of the so-called “imaginary” con-ceptualization of industrial engineering (Foor & Walden, 2009).

Perception of Industrial Engineering as an “Easy” DisciplineTo understand the basis and consequences of the stereotype that industrial engineering

is easy, we explored the foundation of how disciplines have previously been classified in ahierarchical sense. Specifically, the description of industrial engineering as “Imaginary En-gineering” recalls the notion that the sciences can be classified on a spectrum from “soft” to“hard.” A hierarchy of disciplines was published over a century ago by Auguste Comte(1896), classifying disciplines focusing on positivist approaches as “hard,” and by inference,superior to other disciplines. Subsequent work by Beyer, Lodahl, and Gordon (1972) andSmith, Best, Stubbs, Johnston, and Archibald (2000) paralleled Comte’s conclusions andadvanced the measurement of “hardness” from an ordinal scale to an interval scale. Thetrend toward refining the measurement of “hardness” is an indication that it is a widely ac-cepted notion.

Two perceptions that Foor and Walden (2009) identified as separating industrialengineering from other engineering disciplines were distance from technology and aless rigorous curriculum. What Foor and Walden call “distance from technology” hasstrong parallels to themes in earlier research that would describe this distinction as “lesslikely to use graphs,” “softer,” and “less positivist.” Students in the 2006 study by Murphyet al. attribute some of the perception that IE is easier than other engineering disci-plines to a lack of understanding of what IEs do. Murphy et al. label this as the “invisi-bility” of IE. We interpret this to mean that students coming to college do not knowwhat IE is and therefore do not choose it as a major on entry, rather they make thischoice after they learn what the major offers them and how it fits with their academicand career needs. If industrial engineering is stereotyped as easier than other engineer-ing disciplines, it is easier to marginalize the discipline, because engineering has beenfound to operate as a meritocracy of difficulty (Stevens, Amos, Garrison, & Jocuns,2007). Engineering students are socialized to believe that engineers work harder thanothers. The higher starting salaries engineering graduates earn reinforce this belief,given that a meritocratic value system informs their beliefs. Once students adopt thisbelief, working hard is the primary way to judge the value of an engineer or a disciplineof engineering. Further, this belief enables a willingness to sacrifice experiences com-mon to other college students and shapes how engineering students define who belongsin engineering and how they view and interact with non-engineers. This belief supportsthe hegemony of engineering as a major and, most important to this discussion, a hier-archy of engineering disciplines—as students in the Stevens et al. study indicated, “EEis more prestigious than Industrial Engineering because it is harder” (2007, p. 8). Im-portantly, Stevens et al. found that this belief is well supported by the faculty and cul-tures of engineering education. The message that engineering is hard, therefore, is apart of the discourse of engineering students, and that difficulty is a source of prestigeand pride. If IE is perceived as less difficult, we can conclude it will be devalued withinthe cultural context of engineering’s hierarchical and socially constructed meritocracy.

Industrial Engineering Attracts Women Many studies that focus on the climate for women in science and engineering aggregate

engineering with other STEM disciplines or at best only discuss engineering in the collec-tive (Blakemore & Low, 1984; Hill, Corbett, & St. Rose, 2010; Jacobs, 1995; Seymour &Hewitt, 1997). The relative attractiveness of the individual disciplines within engineeringis not discussed, only that the field in its entirety does not generally attract large numbers ofwomen. However, in a cultural analysis, Godfrey (2007) showed that different engineeringdisciplines exhibited different cultures, which affected women’s participation. Thus it isimportant to examine specific disciplines. Studies that do include separate results for in-dustrial engineering are highlighted below.

Following a cohort of about 1000 students at one institution, Humphreys and Freeland(1992) found differences in retention by gender and department. Industrial engineeringhad 35% women at matriculation and was third among the eight engineering disciplinesstudied in percentage of women at matriculation and graduation. Marra, Bogue, and Shen(2008) found that women and men majoring in engineering at one university were statisti-cally indistinguishable on 95% of items on a lengthy survey about classroom activities suchas instructor-student, student-student, and teaching assistant-student relationships. Theyfound, however, that there were many statistically significant differences when answers tothese same questions were compared among the industrial, mechanical, and engineeringscience and mechanics departments. Lord et al. (2009) showed that there were gender dif-ferences in major selection within engineering, but did not explain why these differencesexist.

In one of the few studies to examine critically sex segregation across engineering ma-jors, Litzler (2010) combined data from the Engineering Workforce Commission (EWC)and the Project to Assess Climate in Engineering (PACE) survey to explore both individ-ual and institutional factors that might explain why certain engineering majors have rela-tively higher or lower percentages of women compared with the representation of womenoverall in engineering. The EWC data contains information from all of the schools of en-gineering in the U.S. while the PACE data includes 21 generally large, public, research in-tensive universities. Litzler’s analysis included the implications of human capital theory(which would allow easy exit and re-entry into the field), status beliefs related to the social-ization students receive about the discipline, and discrimination and hostile climate. Sheexamined nine engineering majors that were common to most of the PACE schools,specifically aerospace engineering, biological engineering, chemical engineering, civil engi-neering, computer engineering (including computer science), electrical engineering, indus-trial engineering, material science engineering, and mechanical engineering.

At the individual level, Litzler (2010) found that prior experience with engineeringpulls students toward highly male-dominated fields such as electrical, computer, and me-chanical engineering. A positive climate generally pulls students into majors with a higherproportion of women. Similarly, she found a higher proportion of women in majors thatwere perceived to be family-friendly with greater support from faculty. The proportion ofwomen in the major, however, was not the defining characteristic for women’s choice ofmajor. Rather, individual-level characteristics were more important than institutional vari-ation in women’s major selection overall. Forty percent of the variation in the choice of in-dustrial engineering over bioengineering (her reference discipline), however, is attributableto variation between schools compared with less than 5% of the variation for chemical andmechanical engineering relative to bioengineering. The main point here is that context isimportant, particularly in the choice of industrial engineering by women. Litzler’s findings

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are generalizable to large public institutions that are highly ranked and have a high level ofresearch activity, similar to most of the institutions in our data set.

The most extensive study of women (and men) in industrial engineering was carriedout by a team at University of Oklahoma (OU) in the early 2000’s (Foor & Walden, 2009;Foor, Walden, & Trytten (2007); Murphy, Shehab, Reed-Rhoads, & Trytten, 2006;Murphy et al., 2007; Shehab, Reed-Rhoads, & Murphy, 2005; Trytten et al., 2004;Walden & Foor, 2008). During that time, the industrial engineering department at OUachieved gender parity among undergraduates, doubling from 27% in 1996 to a high of58% women in the Fall of 2001 without any particular programs in place to address thegender balance in the department (Murphy et al., 2007). The authors note that after thestudy, female enrollment in the department reverted to 39% and 34% in the Fall of 2004and 2005 respectively. They attribute the decline to the graduation of student “ambas-sadors” for the IE program and to one of the female faculty members giving birth to twochildren which limited her visibility among students. In the OU case, as in the Litzler(2010) study, context framed outcomes.

The OU study included interviews with 185 women and men from IE departments atOU and three other universities and from three other engineering departments at OU toprovide contrast. They also interviewed most of the IE faculty at OU. Students from allfour institutions described IE as a discipline using terms such as (in decreasing order of fre-quency): people-oriented (80%), emphasizing efficiency (77%), emphasizing business as-pects of a problem (64%), breadth of the discipline (61%), problem solving (56%), commu-nicators (51%), systems-oriented perspective (49%), expedient way to advance intomanagement (47%), and status potential, which was particularly important to women(57% vs. 40% of the men). With respect to department culture, the authors note the IE de-partment at OU had a relatively large proportion of women faculty (4/13) and that womenwere in positions of authority—one was department chair and another was associate dean.The department also actively recruited students by personal invitations from the depart-ment chair, presentations by faculty and students at Society of Women Engineers (SWE)events, freshman seminars, and College of Engineering (COE) recruiting events; andthrough brochures and on a continually updated Web site. Students were given personalattention by faculty and considered themselves to be friends with other students. Overall,the department exuded a sense of community for the faculty and students.

Using the same set of interviews, Foor and Walden (2009) discuss how men and womennegotiate gendered identities for themselves in the “borderland” that is industrial engineer-ing. In this borderland, IE serves as a boundary between the harder and more technical en-gineering disciplines, like chemical or electrical, and the academic world that lies outside ofthe college of engineering, particularly business. The pejorative concept of “imaginary engi-neering” is used by the interviewees who have internalized messages received from peers inother majors that IE, because it is perceived as less technical, must somehow be easier andthe last stop on the road to a business degree for people who are not able to succeed as engi-neers. It is in this context that women and men both have created identities that allow themto feel comfortable with their choice. For women and men, IE offers the ability to be engi-neers while not being “weird.” For women, this means that they can be feminine and havefamilies, while still being professional, something modeled by the women IE faculty at OU.For the men, they can be engineers without being socially isolated or geeky—they can be“normal” people. The authors conclude that IE, as a borderland, is a place where the renegotiated identities “might shift boundaries and produce real transformations inengineering diversity” (Foor & Walden, 2009, p. 58).

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Social Capital Framework for Industrial EngineeringIn deepening our analysis of the context of IE, some of the findings in the literature

cited above may be related to the acquisition of “social capital.” According to Stanton-Salazar and Dornbusch (1995), social capital refers to “a set of properties existing withinsocially patterned associations among people that, when activated, enable them to accom-plish their goals or to empower themselves in some meaningful way” (p. 10). Researchersin engineering education have begun to use the theoretical framework of social capital tounderstand how social networks and social norms are valued (Brown, Flick, & Williamson2005; Daily, Eugene, & Prewitt, 2007; Trenor, Yu, Waight, & Zerda, 2008). Foor,Walden, and Trytten (2007), for example, suggest that social capital in engineering educa-tion comes in a myriad of forms, including “having a parent who is able to forward theirchild’s resume for a summer internship to a friend working at a company that hires engi-neers” (p. 106). These researchers draw on sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s influential workon social reproduction in which he identifies the social and cultural mechanisms that pro-mote success and social status (Bourdieu, 1984). Applied to IE, the theory of social capitalrefers to instrumental relationships between IE students and institutional agents (e.g., fac-ulty, administrators, advisors) who promote perceptions of success. The theory of socialcapital would suggest that the successful social integration of students in IE depends uponconstructing instrumental relationships with institutional agents who will transmit infor-mation about and cultivate student opportunities for success. For example, in IE this in-cludes transmitting information about diverse career paths, the importance of IE’s leader-ship for improving business flows and processes, and the intellectual contributions andtransformative potential IE possesses to make an impact on the industrial economy.

In other engineering majors, social capital is, arguably, more difficult to acquire forwomen because of the gendered, male-dominated, context that dates back to the milita-rized history of engineering as a discipline with its notoriously rigid curricular structurethat limits migration into the major (Hacker, 1989). With its emphasis on social rela-tions and networks, IE promotes social capital and challenges some of these barriers.Throughout this work, we assert that IE broadens the social frame of reference for stu-dents and makes evident the importance of connections to people in industry and theirpotential impact. It also provides experiences that produce attitudes conducive to net-work building. It emphasizes the necessity of a plurality of voices in the workforce,shows value for diverse modes of operation, and promotes innovation and flexibility ascreative skill sets. IE is oriented to enhance student support networks and develop skillsas a strategy for success. Therefore IE conveys social capital as a set of actual and poten-tial resources. IE communicates to students that they have the ability to tap a range ofties within the broad network of the IE field and benefit from these ties. Using a mixed-methods analysis, our goal in this paper is to build upon the theories presented by othersand use a social capital framework to expand the conception of industrial engineering asa unique space for women.

METHODS

We use a mixed methods design, combining quantitative and qualitative research tolearn about the systemic issues that cause a relatively high percentage of women tochoose to be industrial engineering majors. Our quantitative study is anchored in theMIDFIELD database, described below, and allows for generalizability of student major

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selection behavior to large public institutions. Qualitatively, we use focus groups andcontent analysis of IE program Web sites to develop a more complete understanding ofstudents’ motivation for selecting industrial engineering and the messages they receiveabout the discipline. We describe what the students are experiencing and how they areexperiencing it both through their voices and through formal channels such as Websites. Using these qualitative data as part of our overall analysis helps us to validate, in-terpret, clarify, and illustrate the quantitative findings from MIDFIELD (Miles &Huberman, 1994).

The choice of this design stemmed from our analysis of MIDFIELD data. We founda relatively large number of women graduating in IE. We wanted to explore this furtherthrough focus groups to learn the meanings and motivations behind why women major inIE. During the focus groups, students often discussed the impact of the IE departmentalWeb sites in attracting them to the major. We conducted an exploratory content analysisof the IE Web sites to provide a backdrop for the women’s narratives. These three sourcesallow us to explore and explain findings from each.

Quantitative DataThis study uses the Multiple-Institution Database for Investigating Engineering Lon-

gitudinal Development (Long, 2008; Ohland et al., 2008), a data set with more than79,000 students matriculating in engineering at nine southeastern U.S. institutions thatawarded 1/12th of all U.S. engineering bachelor’s degrees from 1987 to 2004. Included inMIDFIELD are two historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Because we arestudying only industrial engineering in this research, we excluded from this study the oneMIDFIELD school that did not offer an IE degree during our timeframe. This resultedin approximately 3,000 students being deleted. We focus on first-time-in-college U.S. cit-izens and permanent residents. Gender and race/ethnicity are self-reported by studentschoosing among Asian, Black, Hispanic, Native American, Non-Resident Alien, Other,and White. We exclude those students who chose Non-Resident Alien or Other fromthis study since those categories each aggregate students such that findings are uninter-pretable. Since we have whole population data, inference is unnecessary—all reported dif-ferences are valid within this population. Graduation is defined as having graduated by thesixth year following matriculation, the standard of reporting used by the Integrated Post-secondary Education Data System (IPEDS) (U.S. Department of Education, 2007).Thus, we consider students who matriculated from 1988–1998 and had graduated sixyears later. While we did not include transfer students, they are the subject of a separatestudy currently under way by MIDFIELD researchers.

Two institutions in this data set have first-year engineering (FYE) programs, mean-ing that students at these institutions cannot matriculate directly into any specific engi-neering major including IE. Thus, to include students at all institutions, we do not reportnumbers of students at matriculation but instead report numbers of students enrolled inIE at the end of Semester 3 (by which point first-year engineering students are expectedto have chosen a major) and six-year graduation. Note that there are over 12,000 engi-neering students in the database who had not declared a major by the end of Semester 3.They may be undecided or still in an FYE program (Brawner et al., 2009). Some of thesestudents, along with people who transfer into engineering from non-engineering majors,do appear in the graduation data as they declared an engineering major after the third se-mester and subsequently graduated. We use six-year graduation because it is a measure of

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educational progress that can be compared to other published data (U.S. Department ofEducation, 2007; National Collegiate Athletic Association, n.d.). We count only enrolledsemesters to Semester 3 to ensure that this earlier measure also measures actual educa-tional progress.

Focus GroupsWe held focus groups with a total of 20 women undergraduates majoring in industrial

engineering at three MIDFIELD institutions during the 2009-2010 academic year. Theinstitutions chosen represent the range of institutions in MIDFIELD with respect to thesize of the IE program and the participation of women. These focus groups were three of10 that we conducted as part of our larger study. All women majoring in industrial engi-neering at the three campuses were invited to participate. The invitations were sent to thestudents on each campus by a person who had access to contact information and wasknown to the women majoring in industrial engineering. Participants who volunteeredmay have done so because of the honorarium and were selected based on their availabilityand interest in the subject. As with any focus group study, we only included students whovolunteered to participate; this method’s weakness is self-selection bias. Some students in-dicated that they would attend but did not. The desired number of students for each groupwas eight to ten since larger groups are too difficult to moderate. Each student received $20for her participation. Students ranged in age from 19 to 23 and were sophomores throughseniors. One group had four students, one had six, and one had 10. Eight of the studentswere African American, seven were White, four were Asian and one was Hispanic. Com-pared with third semester enrollment and graduation in IE in MIDFIELD, Blacks andAsians are overrepresented and Whites are underrepresented in these groups.

Focus groups are a way to get information from groups that are often marginalized andmight be put off by or unresponsive to direct questioning in an interview setting or throughsurveys (Madriz, 2003). Focus group methods offer “a unique opportunity to study indi-viduals in their social contexts, by generating high-quality interactive data, by contributingto the social construction of meaning, and by accessing women’s shared, and often ignored,stocks of knowledge” (Madriz, 2003, p. 383). Madriz suggests that within the cultures ofwomen of color, particularly Blacks, Asians, Latinas, and Native Americans, conversationswith other women about problems and feelings are the norm and that a group setting ismore familiar and comfortable than a one-on-one interview where power clearly rests withthe interviewer.

The purpose of the focus groups was to have students address the following researchquestions: (1) Why did these women choose to major in industrial engineering? (2) Whydo they stay in industrial engineering? and (3) Why is industrial engineering more popularwith women than most other engineering majors?

We used a systematic process as described by Krueger (1998) to prepare and analyze ourdata. This process includes: (a) sequencing the questions to allow the participants to clearlyunderstand the purpose of the study and collect their thoughts, (b) recording each groupwith notetaking by an assistant moderator, (c) coding each theme with a label that is usedeach time it appears, (d) debriefing between the moderator and assistant moderator and (e) sharing findings among the research team. The findings, though not generalizable inthe strictest sense, may be transferrable to other similar environments.

The themes, as they were coded, fit into clusters. Clustering helps us bring order to themany themes offered by the participants by putting them into similar groupings. (Miles &

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Huberman, 1994). The titles for many of the clusters, such as “warmth” and “passion,”were provided by the participants themselves as part of their dialog. Other cluster titleswere inferred from the conversation so phrases such as “you can do anything with thismajor” became “flexibility” and “faster, better, cheaper” became “efficient.” It is common,of course, for thoughts to fit into multiple themes that overlap. For instance, one respon-dent said “you could excel up the ladder a little bit faster knowing that we’re a little bit morewell rounded than any other discipline,” which was coded in both the “generalist” and “ca-reer opportunities” clusters.

The richness of the descriptions of their experiences shared by the students is one of thekey advantages of focus group research. We use direct quotations but edited them to elimi-nate verbal crutches such as “uh,” “er,” “you know,” and excessive repetition to enhancereadability. Unrelated digressions have also been removed and are represented by ellipses(…). Words in square brackets [ ] are added for context and words in parentheses ( ) indi-cate verbal cue such as “laugh” or “others chuckle.” Moderator prompts are preceded by“Moderator.” Respondents are identified by school (A, B, C) and seat number.

In this article, we report common themes, derived from student comments, but leaveinstitution-specific elements out, even if they had a great bearing on students’ decisions at aparticular institution. This is in part because revealing institutional settings could lead thealert reader to identify the institutions and the purpose of this article is to report on find-ings common to industrial engineering in a variety of settings. The Institutional ReviewBoard at each institution approved our study and each student signed a consent form. Stu-dents were assured confidentiality in published articles to the extent possible with a focusgroup.

Content Analysis of IE Web sitesTo understand the broader social context in which these narratives about industrial en-

gineering emerge, we conducted a content analysis of departmental Web sites of theMIDFIELD institutions. Content analysis is a well-established method used in the socialsciences for systematically analyzing text and images (Holsti, 1969; Krippendorff, 2004).Content analysis has recently been applied to the analysis of internet/web content (Herring2010; Herring, Scheidt, Kouper, & Wright, 2006; McMillan, 2000). University Web sitesprovide insights as primary sources of data in which ideas about the mission, values, andobjectives of the curriculum and the institutional character of the program are transmitted.These Web sites provide one view into how engineering programs represent themselves totheir audience, including potential and current engineering students. A primary informa-tion source for many students, these Web sites provide centralized information used bystudents to make decisions about a major, and as a roadmap for those already enrolled.Here, departments and programs welcome students, describe the faculty and their areas ofexpertise, provide descriptive information about requirements for degree fulfillment, andshare news. In our focus groups, students often made reference to their departmental Website, indicating its influence in their decision to major in industrial engineering. So fre-quently was reference made, that we were drawn to conduct this exploratory review of theWeb sites to provide a broader context in which to understand their narratives and to trian-gulate the focus group data by providing a textual analysis.

While not originally a part of the research design, we conducted content analysis of IEWeb pages, following a “grounded-theory” approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Thegrounded theory approach allows concepts and categories to emerge from the codes; wom-en’s narratives provide the codes used as a baseline to study IE Web sites. It is important to

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note that the emergent categories are neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive. Rather,they provide a backdrop and additional layer of “manifest content,” text that is physicallypresent (Berg, 2001), through which we can triangulate the narratives that emerged in thewomen’s focus groups. The social capital theoretical framing, described above, emerged in-ductively from this approach as a useful lens to examine the dynamics of IE.

FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS

Migration into Industrial Engineering Table 1 shows the numbers of students in the MIDFIELD database in various engi-

neering majors at the end of Semester 3 and graduation disaggregated by gender. As statedearlier, Semester 3 rather than matriculation was chosen to enable inclusion of students atall institutions, including those with FYE programs who are not permitted to matriculatedirectly into a major. Note that between Semester 3 and graduation, most engineering ma-jors lose students; only industrial and materials engineering gain students (civil engineeringgains a few men, but that is offset by the loss of over 100 women). In fact, more womengraduate in IE than any other engineering major and IE has the highest percentage (37%)of graduates who are women. Chemical Engineering is the most popular major for womenat Semester 3 but falls behind IE by graduation, even though the proportion of womengraduates is also relatively high at 36%. For men, mechanical is the most popular major ateach time point. IE is the sixth most popular out of the 8 majors shown for men at Semes-ter 3 and rises to fourth by graduation.

Materials engineering also gains students from Semester 3 to graduation. However, inMIDFIELD, materials engineering is actually a combination of programs at differentschools with diverse curricula. These include majors such as ceramics engineering, materi-als science, and textiles engineering. Thus, it is difficult to investigate materials

TABLE 1 Students in Various Engineering Majors at Semester 3 and Graduation

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engineering further without looking at variation by institutional differences, which is be-yond the scope of this paper. Rather, we focus on industrial engineering, which is a singledepartment at each school with similar curricula. IE is a much larger major than materialsand gains many more students after Semester 3.

To examine the demographics of the students involved in the increase in IE studentsfrom Semester 3 to graduation, Table 2 shows the number of U.S. citizen and permanentresident students enrolled in industrial engineering at Semester 3 and graduation disaggre-gated by race/ethnicity and gender. Only populations with greater than 10 students are in-cluded. Note that the number of students increases from Semester 3 to graduation forwomen of all race/ethnicities and men of all race/ethnicities except Blacks. This demon-strates that IE attracts a wide variety of students once they are in college: Black women aswell as Asian, Hispanic, and White women and men.

Students coming from first-year engineering or undecided engineering are more at-tracted to IE than those matriculating directly into a discipline (Brawner et al., 2009).Thus IE is doing a good job of making itself attractive to students who are already enrolledin college as we describe below. This finding is consistent with Walden and Foor (2008)who found that six of their 52 interviewees (12%) chose IE from their engineering unde-cided category. The focus group data we present below allows us to triangulate our dataand explore this finding in greater depth.

Other studies (Litzler, 2010; Ohland et al., 2011) have found that there is substantialinstitutional variation in the percentage of women entering and graduating from engineer-ing and the various disciplines. The average percentage of women in MIDFIELD schoolsin IE at Semester 3 is 38% and at graduation is 37%. At Semester 3, the range is 31% to48% and at 6-year graduation, the range widens further from a low of 30% to a high of58%. Women make up 50% or more of the IE graduates at 3 institutions. The percentageof women graduating in IE at the three institutions where we held focus groups was 50% atInstitution A, 38% at Institution B, and 33% at Institution C, well representing the rangein MIDFIELD. This corresponds with Litzler’s (2010) finding that certain institutionsand programs are better able to recruit a diverse population than others.

TABLE 2 Race and Gender of IE Students from Semester 3Through Graduation

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Curriculum Expectations for IE and Other Engineering Disciplines Table 3 compares the required engineering core courses for industrial engineering

programs to those required for chemical, civil, electrical, and mechanical engineeringprograms at the nine institutions in MIDFIELD. The expectations of students in IEare very similar to those in other engineering majors. The IE core curriculum is typicalof other engineering curricula. Thus, the attraction of students to IE does not appearto be based on a desire to avoid engineering core requirements. Since the courses in-cluded in the IE core curriculum are so similar to those of other engineering disci-plines, it cannot be argued that the design of the preparatory curriculum for IE is“weaker.”

Performance Measures of Students Choosing Industrial Engineering To explore whether the students choosing IE were “weaker” in some way, we studied

the grades earned in the most universal courses from Table 3, namely Calculus I, II, andIII, Physics I and II, and Chemistry I. Litzler (2010) notes that fields with greater repre-sentation of women had higher average GPAs. While Litzler expresses concern that thisfinding may be interpreted to mean that women are more likely to choose “easier” disci-plines, our study compares the performances of students in various majors in a common setof courses to bring clarity to the issue.

We calculated the grade point average of students in these core courses disaggregatingby third-semester major namely IE, chemical, civil, electrical, and mechanical. The popu-lation for each major therefore includes: (1) the students matriculating in that major who

TABLE 3 Engineering Course Requirements at MIDFIELD Institutions, 1999

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persist in that major through the third semester and (2) students who switch into thatmajor from other engineering majors, FYE programs, or from outside engineering and areenrolled at the end of the third semester. Transfer students are not easily compared to first-time-in-college students, and are not included in this study. Each major’s third-semesterpopulation excludes students who matriculate in that major or switch into that major be-fore the third semester, but leave the major (or the university) prior to the end of the thirdsemester. Women enrolled in IE in the third semester are performing academically well,with an average grade in these six core courses of 2.63, compared to chemical (2.79), me-chanical (2.66), civil (2.63), and electrical (2.59). The average core course grade of chemicalengineering students at the third semester stands out, which is not surprising given thatchemical engineering students exhibit the highest level of pre-college performance indica-tors among engineering majors (Zhang, Thorndyke, Anderson & Ohland, 2003). Menenrolled in IE at the third semester do indeed have the lowest average core course grade(2.49) compared to men in chemical (2.77), electrical (2.64), mechanical (2.60), and civil(2.54). Thus, while men who are weak academically may gravitate toward IE, the samedoes not appear to be the case for women who enroll in IE. Studying the overall GPA atthe third semester (rather than the grades in selected courses) of students enrolled in vari-ous disciplines, women enrolled in IE have a cumulative GPA at the end of the third se-mester of 2.88 compared with a 2.89 cumulative GPA for all women enrolled in engineer-ing in the third semester. The GPA and average core course grade are limited measures;they are computed at the third semester and are only valid at the third semester. In additionto changes in the GPAs of students that can occur as the students take additional course-work, this calculation is particularly affected by changes in population, changing as stu-dents move into and out of various engineering majors. The subject, therefore, deserves amore focused treatment, and a more complete study is under way to describe the courseperformance of students in various engineering disciplines and the role that performancemay play in migration and attraction. The comparison here is intended to provide evidencethat the relatively high fraction of women in IE cannot be explained away simply becauseIE is easier or more tolerant of weaker students—it is important therefore, to listen to thereasons described by women in IE.

Student VoicesWe have shown that IE is a major that attracts students of all races and both genders

and that the core curriculum expectations for IE students are very similar to those found inthe other engineering disciplines. From this point, we sought to explore with women whatit is that attracted them to IE and why they believe the major is attractive to women in gen-eral. In our focus groups we asked for the key reasons why they chose the IE major andhow it differed from other majors that they considered. We asked them to speculate aboutwhy women were more attracted to IE than other engineering majors. Finally, we askedwhy they persist in IE.

The common themes about the attractiveness of IE expressed by the women are:warmth, flexibility, passion, efficient, sociability, generalists, feminine, career opportuni-ties, and finally, least often mentioned, was easier. They are highlighted below ordered bydecreasing frequency of mention.

Warmth. More than any other reason, students described the atmosphere in their de-partments as warm, inviting, positive, and familial. “The whole department is just really,they’re really enthusiastic (all start to voice agreement at once). It’s just – they made you feel

so welcome and warm” (A1). Along the same lines, one of the male students in Tryttenand colleagues’ (2004) study coined the term “inviteful engineering” to capture the positiveperceptions of IE at Oklahoma. Like the IE department at OU, most of the IE depart-ments in MIDFIELD are relatively small compared to other engineering departments atthose institutions with fewer than 200 undergraduate students in the major at any onetime. In our study, although Institution B has more than 350 students, Institutions A andC have fewer than 200 undergraduate students in the major. This small size leads to a fam-ily atmosphere. “It’s just one big family, especially at [school A] in the industrial engineer-ing department. …You can ask any other major, we actually look like one big family” (A3).

I definitely agree with like the small family aspect. And you can still go and talk toprofessors you may have had like another semester, and they’ll just sit down andjust talk, see how you’re doing, and stuff like that. And, once I got to know them Iwas like, I definitely want to stay here. I just knew. I was like, I love the peoplethat I’m in here with. (C2)

Students seem to genuinely like the people that they come across in their majors. Onestudent said “it’s just no drama in the major…no one has any problem with anyone” (A1).Faculty are also described as relaxed and helpful.

I mean it doesn’t feel like the atmosphere in our classes – it’s not like, oh, they’rejust the professor and we’re just sitting here taking notes. It’s more laid back Iguess. So it’s easier to learn and…you feel more relaxed in class because they makeit that way. (C2)

Everybody’s so relaxed. All the professors are relaxed. You walk in the class andthey [just say] “hey, how ya doin’?” They know your name. They know your face.Even when you think they don’t know your name (giggles) they know your name.(A6)

Students find the faculty and staff to be approachable. Professors, advisors, and evendepartment chairs are willing to help with homework and personal issues. The departmen-tal advisor at School A helped students deal with the death of another student, made stu-dents feel welcome in their first year, and found scholarship money so one student couldcontinue in the program.

To be perfectly honest, my freshman year here, I didn’t do so well. But after myfreshman year I had to do a lot of things and my advisors and my professors werethere to help me get back on track my following years. So that was the biggest…Iguess the only and biggest obstacle I’ve faced since I’ve been here, but thedepartment was so willing. You know, if I did my part, they were willing to helpme through the process. (A2)

The chairperson of our department, and he just made… my situation, feel a lotbetter because I used to work like a lot. I used to go straight from class into work.And … my GPA was just dropping and dropping …. And [the department chair]actually called me up … and then I went to the office and talked to him about thesituation, … and he actually made me feel a lot [more] comfortable with it,because he [said], “I did the same thing you did when [I was in] college, and…Ican relate to you.” (A3)

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[I had a family issue and] was very tired and had two IE classes. And myprofessors were very flexible, very nice about it. One of them actually [let mecomplete] some work just from home so that I can take care of [my family issue]and work…. So he’s definitely helped me out a whole lot. And the other one also -if I ever needed anything, I could stop by and he’d catch me up on theassignments, that kind of thing. (C1)

Lyon (2009) found that successful women in engineering all had a faculty or staff mem-ber who supported them academically and personally when necessary and that was one ofthe key reasons that students persisted in spite of the difficulty, isolation, and lack of bal-ance between academic and personal lives that they felt as engineers. Litzler (2010) foundthat students (men and women) in majors with the highest proportion of women (includ-ing IE) report a greater sense that their professors care and a greater sense of communityand that students in IE, along with materials science engineering, appear to be doing a par-ticularly good job of creating community of the nine majors studied.

Finally, this sense of warmth connects to the concept of social capital. Through the cul-tivation of social relationships students perceive unique bonds with professors that lead toopportunities. This student made the connection apparent:

But I would say that all the professors I’ve ever had are very approachable… if youmake the time to go and talk to them, they’ll talk to you about anything, and youcan develop the relationship of a mentor. And that was kind of my experience… Iwent to a couple of office hours with my probability professor and obviously, youknow, you get sick of talking about probability, so I’ll say hey, what’re you doin’this weekend? And so we just kind of started a friendship from there. And then,whenever I needed, you know, help in other classes or a recommendation for ascholarship or anything like that, we just kind of email, even though he’s not at[this institution] any more. (B3)

In this example, we see that the student’s perception of a valuable social network grewfrom the rapport established between the professor and student, which fits within the stu-dent’s sense of the “approachable” environment cultivated overall by the faculty. The con-nection between a positive climate and the perceived potential for the acquisition of socialcapital in IE is clear.

Flexibility. While students believed that IE departments were nice places to be, theyalso liked the flexibility of opportunities they had both during their time at the universityand once they embarked on a career. Students at two of the schools mentioned the oppor-tunity to study abroad and how this was possible for them due to the flexibility of course se-quencing in the major. All three schools offer study abroad opportunities specifically forindustrial engineering majors.

The prospect of being able to apply what they have learned to a number of fields is a verystrong attraction for these women. “I also liked its versatility compared to the other majors.With industrial engineering you can work in so many different fields, but you’re not limitedto one area” (C3). Even if they do not yet know what they want to do, they believe that theywill have a lot of options “With our discipline, we can do absolutely anything….We can buildschools, phones, theme parks, I mean, anything you can think of we can do” (A2). Thetheme park example she cites refers to an IIE video that appears on School A’s Web site, sug-gesting that the content in the recruitment video resonates with the theme of flexibility.

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No matter what I want to do, I can go into any field…. So I mean, having adegree like that under my belt and then making the decision, oh, now, what aremy interests? How can I apply my major and the things that I like here with myoutside interests and make it a career? (A6)

There are so many different fields within IE. And some of them are prettydifferent, so I knew that I could if I wanted to go somewhere in finance ormanagement, I could. Or if I want to do something more technical, or operations,or even social science/human related – they’re all pretty different but theystill…[use] problem solving skills. (B6)

Sixty-one percent of the students in the OU studies (Murphy et al., 2006; Murphy etal., 2007) used breadth of the field as a descriptor for IE ranking it fourth of the eight de-scriptors they used. Nearly all (11/12) of the faculty they interviewed at OU used breadthas a term to describe IE, which is due to the intentional design of the curriculum to ex-pose students to that breadth. This descriptor had the lowest spread among institutions(16 percentage points), indicating that it is a very common feature of the various curricu-la. They conclude that a majority of students they interviewed chose IE “not because of aparticular interest in an IE sub-field, but for the variety of work available to an IE andthe potential to shift among the types of work within one career” (Murphy et al., 2007,p. 245).

Six of our participants who initially thought they wanted to be business majorschose industrial engineering instead. The ability to combine engineering skills withmanagement skills was very attractive to them. “I looked into industrial engineeringand I was like, wow, this is like a twist of business and engineering. I mean you can’t gowrong with it” (A4).

I’ve always just been like a math and science person. So when I applied here, I wasthinking more of management, but I talked to some other students and they [toldme] industrial engineering is kind of management but with more math andscience. So it just made sense. (B6)

I kind of like that it’s a lot of business, actually. And I was trying to decidebetween a business major and engineering. I almost went to [another universitywith a strong undergraduate business program]. And so it’s a lot more focused onbusiness than the other engineering disciplines. I like that for sure. (C1)

The OU studies also found that the business aspects of IE were attractive to a majorityof the students they interviewed (Murphy et al., 2007; Shehab et al., 2005). Like our stu-dents, they found that people were attracted to the prestige and at some level the difficultyof being engineers while embracing the business side.

A very appealing quality of the discipline for some of the students is that because of itsflexibility, one does not need to embark on an engineering career upon graduation. “I didn’t necessarily want to be an engineer when I graduated but I wanted to be able to thinklike an engineer and be able to use that in a … variety of fields” (B2).

I want to go into law. And going to law school would eliminate me taking the FE[Fundamentals of Engineering exam] or being a professional engineer. It kind ofgets me straight to the product. I can be studying engineering and in law whichmakes things a little bit easier, not being a professional engineer. (A4)

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I guess if I wasn’t studying industrial engineering I might not be studyingengineering. I liked industrial engineering because of the problem solving skillsthat can be applied in different fields. (B6)

It is not particularly surprising that a field notable for its breadth would attract peoplewho want to have a good foundation for any endeavor that they might want to pursue, evenif it is outside of the expected bounds of the discipline. Eight of the 20 women have non-engineering career goals. We do not have comparative data to know if this is common towomen in all engineering disciplines or unique to IE. This is a question that should be ex-plored in future research. The “big picture” nature of IE, however, gives these women con-fidence that they can work in many different disciplines. Interestingly, this is one themethat is not mentioned in others’ research outside of the context of breadth of the major. Inthose cases, the breadth that is discussed is within the field of industrial engineering asbroadly defined, not as a springboard to careers completely outside of the discipline.

Passion. Another theme that arose was the passion that students feel for their major.They reflected a real joy in being part of the department and learning the material. Stu-dents at School A, in particular were ebullient about being in the IE major. “I love, I love, Ilove industrial engineering. I can honestly say that. I love my major” (A4). “I mean industrialengineering is so…dynamic. It’s just a great major to have. It’s a great base, it’s a great – Idunno, it’s just great” (A6). “It’s a passion. Having a passion about this [makes us] evenmore dedicated to what we want to do and that’s what makes us so successful. Becausewe’re really dedicated to it” (A4).

Students at Schools B and C were somewhat more reserved in their descriptions, butnonetheless expressed a similar joy in studying industrial engineering. “I think if you have apassion and if you’re attracted to something here, you’re obviously gonna do better thanworking at something that you’re not passionate about” (B5). “Overall, it’s been a wonder-ful experience. I have not been disappointed by the department. I love my classes. The ma-terial is fascinating for me. I love getting to work on different problems and our faculty andTAs are amazing” (B8).

I just really liked the stuff I was doing. Like, it’s kinda hard to go into a class and[think] I really enjoy this. And I just knew that I enjoyed it when the classes weretough and when I came I [thought] I really like that class, even though I was uplate some nights studying. I really enjoyed what I was doing. (C3)

This passion extended to or perhaps evolved from the professors because of the percep-tion that faculty also have a passion for teaching the material.

And the professors are excited about what they teach. It’s not like the professorsare up there like, uh, okay, well, another class, here we go. You know, they’re likethis is what I’ve learned. This is how I’ve applied it and this is what I want to teachyou so that you can apply it in a different way, in a better way. (A6)

So I know for me it made a huge difference that when I came into thedepartment, even my entry level classes, I had teachers who were really passionateabout making sure that we really understood the material because they knew thatwould get us to the courses that they were passionate about. (B8)

This theme of passion for teaching and the discipline appears to be something commonamong industrial engineering departments. The passion these students express is an

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extreme expression of interest, which is acknowledged as a component of career choice(Holland, 1973). Murphy and her colleagues (2007) considered it “striking” (p. 245) howstudents talked about their peers and professors as being passionate about their field in thefour institutions they studied and noted that faculty at Oklahoma were hired in part be-cause they had a passion for teaching and mentoring.

Efficient. The idea of continual improvement and efficiency was another theme. “Ifthe economy’s good, people want to save money. If the economy’s bad, people want to savemoney” (B3). These women enjoyed making products and processes less expensive andmore efficient. “What we do is make things faster, better, cheaper, and there’s not anythingon this earth that doesn’t want to be made faster, better or cheaper” (A6).

A lot of other engineers call us imaginary engineers (others chuckle). But for somereason, you can’t do anything without us. Might have a mechanical engineer thatcan design the same thing that we do, but we can do it cheaper. (A5)

I worked at a summer camp which had hundreds of people and even looking atthe lunchroom I was like, “you need to rearrange that line.” And so from practicalthings like that, I can see that that saved a certain amount of time. And I’m reallyinterested in making things better. (B10)

I wanted to be able to design really cool things like that [company] facility. Thatthing was awesome. They have three different stories of conveyor belts movingparts all over the place and bringing them exactly to where they need to be at theright time. And being able to work with a process and come up with somethingthat’s that efficient and that amazing, that sold me. (B8)

That was my thing because I feel like I can really help people with building stuff,putting stuff together. But we worry about making stuff better for the use ofeverybody. (C4)

Making things more efficient is one of the founding concepts of IE. While it hasevolved from the humans-as-cogs-in-a-process of Frederick Taylor’s scientific manage-ment to a discipline that is overtly concerned with the integration of people with processesand components, the central notion of efficiency and continuous improvement pervadesthe discipline. Murphy et al. (2006) found that efficiency was mentioned as a descriptor ofIE second only to people-oriented by their 117 interviewees at four institutions.

Sociability. As we have noted from the literature, industrial engineering is the disci-pline of choice for people-oriented engineers. These students likewise found the expecta-tion of working with people very attractive. Women who are extroverts believe that as in-dustrial engineers they have the ability “to shine our personality a little bit more than anyother [engineering] discipline would do” (A4). They liked the ability to be as technical orsocial as they felt comfortable with in their jobs. The social aspect of their anticipated workwas a key attraction.

The opportunities in IE are, as far as jobs go, they’re a little more social. I neededto work with people … it’s kind of like a connection. So it’s definitely stilltechnical, but there’s also more of a personal aspect too. (B6)

On a day-to-day basis I feel like industrial engineers talk to more people, have morekind of social aspects of what they need to do. And a lot of it is people-focused. A lot

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of it is, y’know, how can we make these people form a line that’s gonna go thefastest, or something like that. Whereas, with chemicals or mechanical you have only[a] technical role and you don’t get that interaction with other people. And that wasreally important to me – that I had a degree where they were just gonna hand me atoolbox of fundamentals, and I could go out and attack any problem I wanted, andreally be able to interact with people at the same time. (B3)

I didn’t want to be sitting at a desk my whole life. And I knew with industrialengineering I was pretty much guaranteed that I could find a job where I’d be outworking with other people and I wouldn’t be sitting [in the] same place every day.(C3)

This concept of working with people also goes back to the birth of the discipline. LillianGilbreth, while initially agreeing with Frederick Taylor on scientific management princi-ples, later disagreed with him over his disregard for the human element as the discipline wasevolving (Graham, 1998). In their 2006 study, Murphy et al. found that “people-oriented”was the most mentioned descriptor of IE in the aggregate among their 117 interviewees atfour institutions, although there was some variation among institutions.

Generalist. The broad curriculum in IE leads to a general knowledge of other engi-neering disciplines through mandatory coursework in those other disciplines. Students feltthat this made them more “well-rounded,” allowed them a “big picture” understanding of aproject or process, and an ability to take more coursework if they need to learn more abouttechnical issues in other fields. As one student said, “we have to dibble-dabble in everything.But nobody really dibble-dabbles in what we do. So that kind of gives us the upper hand. Sowe know a little bit like an overview of everything” (C4). They found these qualities to be at-tractive for both furthering their education and making them highly desirable as employees.

It’s dynamic, it’s the most complex discipline of engineering….So since we’re inthe major and we know what we can do, we can mold our education or what wecan do to fit whatever we’re applying for, whatever the position is. We can applyour knowledge and what we’ve been taught to excel in whatever that position is.And a lot of people are unaware of what an industrial engineer is capable of. Sothat’s one of those things that geared me to doing industrial engineering. (A2)

Industrial engineers get to solve the big problems. They are the ones thatdetermine how the whole project is going to run. And then they go tell themechanical engineers, “I need you to build a machine that does this. I need you tomake a chemical that can to this.” And I liked the piece of industrial engineeringwhere it looks at the process. It looks at the whole big picture and allows you tozoom in and at the same time to zoom out and look at the whole thing. (B3)

I think one thing that makes it different is with our curriculum we learn a lotabout everything else. We don’t just do like computer engineering or civilengineering. We take classes in a lot of those other majors and we learn a lot abouteverything so we can tie it into what we’re supposed to be doing, which is makingstuff efficient. (C3)

Feminine. We asked these women why they think women are more attracted to in-dustrial engineering than other engineering disciplines. In response, they brought out what

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they consider to be the feminine aspects of industrial engineering. Rather than drawing onperceived distinctions between the social and the technical, as might have been expected,women responded using essentialist terms. “You look through the list of the majors, like ifI had to say girlier or guy, I would definitely [say] industrial engineering is girlier” (A1).

I know it’s a little sexist, but I feel like women take things and make it better.That’s what we’re here for. I mean you have babies or whatever, you take this littlething and you make it into a person. That’s what we do, that’s our nature….Wenurture. So in industrial engineering you take this little thing and you make itbigger, better, and cheaper (she and others chuckle). So I think women are moredrawn to this major because it goes hand in hand with our nature. (A6)

I think in terms of the subject of industrial engineering, girls, but I don’t meanthat I think guys can’t do it, but girls tend to be better at it. Like scheduling andfiguring out more efficient ways to do things, and sort of planning and I thinkthat’s the big aspect of industrial engineering. And so I think it fits our strengthsbetter than it would a lot of men’s strengths. … And I think it goes back to justgrowing up in general. Girls are more organized, schedule-focused…. And so Ifeel like the strengths of the gender in general fit industrial engineering pretty well,such that it would make us better. (B7)

These responses echo those of some of those found by Foor and Walden (2009). Theyinterpret them as women students, within the borderland that is industrial engineering,having the “freedom to enact culturally prescribed notions of heteronormative femininity”and “claim a nontransgressive feminine engineering identity” (p. 54). They attribute this toa comfortable culture and a community created in part by female faculty where “womencan negotiate acquiring the status of ‘doing engineering’ without committing gender inau-thentication by ‘being an engineer’” (p. 59). However, Foor and Walden do caution thatsaying IE is a “natural fit” can lead to this rationale being used to justify continued exclu-sion of women from other engineering disciplines.

Career opportunities. The perceived availability of good and even fun jobs immedi-ately after graduation has tremendous appeal.

A lot of people that major in things that aren’t careers, they’re stuck without jobswhen they graduate, so that was important when I was looking for what I was goingto major [in] and making sure that when I graduate I’d be able to find a job. (A1)

I had [a social science major] as my first major and then when I was like a thirdyear I started double majoring because I realized that there weren’t as many jobs in[that field]. And a lot of my friends weren’t getting jobs and so they would justdelay here and go work at the mall and then go to grad school and it wasn’t reallywhat I wanted to do. So I wanted a job straight after graduation. (B10)

Like if you go to the career fair, you will find a job. I mean, last semester I gotseven job offers. And you just kind of look at them and you’re like, look at all theseinteresting things that I could do. Look at all this fun that I could have and youhave to choose. (B3)

Not only are good jobs available, but these women also saw opportunities to advancequickly in their careers without having to go to graduate school.

The time that you start off to the point where you can enter management is short(others mumble agreement). It’s like a zero to five year span that you can be inmanagement and you’re talking management within five years of graduation,[with] just an undergrad [degree]. (A6)

Since industrial engineers, if we were to do something in manufacturing orwhatever job it may be or whatever corporation, I think we would be in charge (afew chuckles from others) of the other fields. Like if you’re a mechanical engineer,you work there, but I could be your boss a lot easier or quicker than you can moveup in management. (A2)

I think it has more opportunity for management. I didn’t know that before and Iwas researching it and then, I guess you have a lot of room to move up. When youget a career in industrial where you might not have the opportunity in other fieldsas much. (C2)

Murphy, et al. (2006) found this sentiment to be more prevalent among the men thatthey interviewed than the women. It was also the only domain of the eight that they identi-fied that had such a large gender gap. Men and women tended to respond in about equalpercentages on their other domains. However, A2 reflected a nearly identical commentfrom one of the men in Trytten and colleagues’ 2004 study who said “industrial engineerswill be the [other engineers’] bosses in the future” (p. 3). We cannot speak for the men, butthe women we interviewed did get the message that IE is a road to advancement. The con-nection between perceived opportunities for career placement in IE and the acquisition ofsocial capital during tenure as an undergraduate (as a mechanism to facilitate this transi-tion), is worthy of future study. Some evidence of this was found in the Web site contentanalysis later described in this paper.

Easier? The theme of “industrial engineering is easier” was not a dominant one in thediscourse of the students we interviewed. It was mentioned less frequently than the eightother themes we have discussed. However, we are able to shed some light on this much-discussed stereotype that students choose industrial engineering because it is easier or be-cause they cannot succeed in “more rigorous” engineering disciplines. While many respon-dents suggested that popular ideas about industrial engineering being the easier majorabounded, most offered a different narrative.

I guess compared to all the other engineerings, people always say it’s supposed tobe the easier one….That’s not why I chose it. Moderator: Why did you choose it ifit was for other reasons? Respondent: Because of the social aspect of it and theversatility. I didn’t really hear about the fact that it was easier until after I hadgotten in industrial engineering. And that’s when I started hearing it. So thatwasn’t a reason why I did it actually. (C3)

I think some people can legitimately say in a lot of ways IE is the easiestengineering, only because we’re not forced to take as many technical classes.So you don’t have to do as much like narrow, focused study in one field. Youdon’t have to take like three different electrical engineering courses in a row,to teach you the very specific details of how a computer works, or how todevelop some kind of computer network. But it’s a much broader scope, andso with your technical electives, the chance that you can focus in on one thing

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and really narrow down… that is an option. You can take a more introductorylevel [in] other engineering fields, rather than being so narrow and focused onjust one. (B8)

I know people who are other majors, they get their masters in industrialengineering….They might call us imaginary engineering, but if you really do thestatistics on that, you would know that they’ll come to industrial engineering bythe end of the day. (A3)

Of all our respondents, only one said the reason she chose the major was because “Iheard it was easier. That you don’t take as [many] technical classes as mechanical or chemi-cal would and that’s why I decided on industrial” (B1). The others all asserted that theychose the major for other reasons, and several were a bit defensive about the stereotypes ofthe IE discipline.

Web Site Content AnalysisIn the focus groups, women students referenced internet content, specifically the im-

portance of the IE departmental Web page in shaping their selection of a major. Consis-tent with a grounded theory approach, the codes that emerged from the focus group dataprovided a basis from which to form concepts and categories for the Web site analysis.

Our content analysis began with a research question: Do the departmental Web sitescontain manifest content related to the coded themes that emerged in the focus groups?We then selected our sample of Web sites to be analyzed. Sample selection was deter-mined by subjects within the dataset. Thus, Web sites selected are only representative ofthe eight campuses with IE programs included in the MIDFIELD dataset. We use thislimited sample not as a proxy for an exhaustive analysis, but rather to provide a cross-sectional snapshot of the context to which women referred during the open-ended focusgroup questions. One limitation to Web site analysis is that internet content changes overtime, rendering some links invalid for future analysis.

We used the coding units from the focus group data (that IE is warm and flexible; stu-dents’ sense of passion for the major, belief that there are opportunities to makeproducts/processes more efficient, opportunities for sociability, IE is more general, morefeminine, ample career opportunities, ease of major) to define categories for content analy-sis. We then reviewed the Web sites to investigate whether the coded focus group datawere echoed on the departmental Web sites.

Analysis of the Web sites’ content yielded information that helps understand thegendered construction of IE programs, shedding light on the strategies used to constructthe profession of industrial engineering. In our review of the IE Web sites of MID-FIELD institutions, we found language that de-emphasized technological competence(traditionally a masculine domain), and instead emphasized solidarity and unity withinthe profession. Three important themes emerge in the content analysis of IE Web sites:IE differentiates itself from other engineering majors, collegiality, and potential forleadership.

IE differentiates itself from other engineering majors. One Web site begins thepage with: “Thinking of Becoming an Industrial Engineer?” followed by four key questions:

Do you enjoy interacting with people? Do you enjoy working with computers? Doyou enjoy solving problems? Do you enjoy making things easier for others? If

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you’ve answered yes to some of these questions, then industrial engineering justmight be the right career choice for you! (http://www.eng.ncat.edu/dept/isen/students_pros.htm)

One IE program emphasized that IE majors “stand out in a crowd,” become versed intranscultural skills, work with a variety of people and emerge as team leaders. The languagebroadens the boundaries of engineering, blurring the technological with the social. ThisWeb site text resembled student comments about working with people, and changingthings to make them “faster, better, and cheaper,” as many students alluded to in our focusgroups.

Another Web site clarifies the nature of IE work: “Many people are misled by the termindustrial engineer. It’s not just about manufacturing. It also encompasses service indus-tries, with many IEs employed in entertainment industries, shipping and logistics busi-nesses, and health care organizations...” (http://www.ise.vt.edu/about/whatis.php). Simi-lar to other IE Web sites, the broad array of career possibilities are provided as examples ofthe potential impact students can have on their social worlds. As described earlier, studentsin focus groups were keenly aware of the broad range of career opportunities available tothem, and spoke fluently about prospective futures with a degree in IE.

Collegiality and community. One campus IE Web site boasts, “[The] mix of inter-national students provides a fertile ground for exposing our students to a variety of cultures,developing in them an awareness of global issues. This diversity enriches the learning expe-rience, creating engineers who can not only address the complex technical challenges facing us but who are also more sensitive and educated global citizens, a clear need for theEngineer of 2020.” (http://www.clemson.edu/ces/departments/ie/about_us/news_events/news2010_international_collaboration.html)

Another campus provocatively asks, “Is there a fun side to ISE?” and invites students to“attend frequent research meetings with faculty in two of the most popular tourist destina-tions in the United States!” (http://www.ise.vt.edu/about/index.php). Student quotes, em-bedded as textbox content on the Web sites, further highlight the social relationships be-tween faculty and students. This student quote suggests that social capital can be acquiredthrough both relationships with peers and with faculty:

What I like best about the ISE Department are the people. All the students arefriendly, respectful, and always eager to help their fellow classmates in one way oranother. It seems that the ISE faculty as a whole is truly committed to seeingstudents succeed and excel in every aspect of their education as well as their futurecareers. (http://www.ise.vt.edu/about/whatis.php)

The language suggests that individuals are valued, that there is a sense of communitywithin the program and that these factors connect with students’ future careers. Pictures onthe Web site also promote the idea that students and faculty will bond collegially.

Leadership opportunities. Another salient theme suggests the capacity for industrialengineers to become problem-solvers that bring about change. Discussion of becoming aleader who could make things “better” and “easier” was common. Industrial engineers arefacilitators who use teamwork and engineering management skills. The importance of com-munication skills and the ubiquity of communication as a skill set emerged hand-in-handwith the leadership discourse. These themes resonated with students in our focus groupswho described that they would one day manage the other engineers. Many campuses used a

common video to highlight leadership opportunities available in industrial engineering ca-reers and to define the scope of the field. One of our interviewees pointedly referred to “thatawesome video” as the reason that she chose industrial engineering. The video was pro-duced by the IIE and demonstrates the wide range of job opportunities, in workplaces thatrange from NASA to Hershey’s Chocolate to Disney. The video highlights the diversity ofindustrial engineers by race, gender, and age, in their own voices. They use language such as“fun and creative” and highlight the leadership services provided to diverse customers.(http://www.clemson.edu/ces/departments/ie/undergraduate_program/index.html)

Foor and Walden (2009) examined the IE Web site at University of Oklahoma andfound many of the same themes as we have. They conclude that the “unintended conse-quences from the school’s recruitment materials seem to contribute to the perception thatIE is a soft, nontechnical engineering discipline, ‘naturally’ suited for women” (p. 51).

There are some exceptions. Two MIDFIELD campuses refrain from ebullient lan-guage, emphasizing instead a high national ranking and reputation, the premier connec-tions of their faculty and at one, only at the very bottom of the Web page, is there a men-tion of collegiality. Students, too, in one of the focus groups addressed the prestige andrank of their campus in much the same manner as it is communicated on that campus’sWeb site; however, rank and reputation were not common reasons for choosing IE amongstudents at all campuses. What was common was that the students presented themselves inmuch the same way as their departments presented themselves on their Web sites.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

This paper has examined what it is that makes industrial engineering attractive towomen. Using quantitative data, we show that students are attracted to IE from Semester3 through graduation unlike any other engineering discipline. While the ability of indus-trial engineering programs to attract women may be particularly noticeable, we found thatsuch programs attract both women and men, and members of all racial and ethnic groups.We found no quantitative basis for the persistent stereotype that industrial engineering iseasier than other engineering disciplines or that its students are less qualified. In the firsttwo-to-three semesters when students take courses common to most or all engineeringdisciplines, institutional data show that students enrolled in IE at the third semester arenot academically inferior to other engineering majors. While we realize that our resultswill not immediately dispel the popular perception, we argue that there is something dif-ferent about the culture of IE that attracts students, something beyond the stereotype ofbeing “easier.”

Social capital theory is useful to understand our qualitative data findings, which drawon the voices of the IE majors and make clear reference to the norms and networks attract-ing them to IE: warmth of the faculty, sociability within the departments, and good jobprospects. Our findings support the notion that women in IE perceive the acquisition ofsocial capital to be related to the climate of IE departments. Social capital is one mecha-nism that affects attraction to and persistence in IE. In addition, consistent with other re-search on IE, students suggest the major is inviting and the coursework provides flexibility.Women in IE are able to find an authentic way of combining the prestigious social creden-tial of being an engineer with practices they value, without losing their sense of self. In de-scribing the major, women assert a sense of passion towards the field of IE. The least fre-quently mentioned attribute was the notion that IE is an easy major; yet some womenexpressed a keen awareness of the negative stereotypes attributed to IE as an easy major.

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Finally, our content analysis of the Web sites suggests that many of the themes thatemerged in the focus groups were culturally salient. That is, Web sites featured much ofthe same language and content suggesting, for example, that a plethora of workplaces areadaptable to IE skill sets and that IE graduates make organizations and workflows “faster,better, and cheaper.” The acquisition of social capital is also evidenced in the themes of col-legiality, inclusion, and diversity, present in both focus groups and Web sites. Our findingssuggest the need for more research incorporating both the voices of those social actors whofacilitate the acquisition of social capital and the myriad of forums, including web content,through which students receive messages.

GeneralizabilityOne of the guiding principles of the scientific study of education is that it yields find-

ings that replicate and generalize across studies (Feuer, Towne, & Shavelson, 2002). Al-though our focus group participants were self-selected from among women majoring in IEat three institutions, our findings corroborate those of the researchers at the University ofOklahoma studying a different set of institutions. Because of this, the findings of this qual-itative research are more generalizable than would normally be expected. Perhaps the onlyaspect of IE mentioned by the respondents in the 2006 article by Murphy et al. that wasnot mentioned by any of our respondents was that IE’s are good communicators. We donot know if that is due to different research objectives, programmatic differences amonginstitutions (institutional results varied widely from 31% to 76% mentioning communica-tions at their four schools), or some other reason. Our theory is that there appear to be uni-versal characteristics that make IE relatively more attractive to women than most other en-gineering majors. We argue that it is not because industrial engineering is perceived aseasier, since similar proportions of women also choose chemical engineering, by most ac-counts a “hard” discipline. Rather that the combination of coursework, career possibilities,and gestalt of industrial engineering is both different and attractive. As Litzler (2010) con-cludes, “culture and climate may be the most important factor for student decisions tochoose one major over another” (p. 158).

What This Means for Other Engineering DisciplinesWhether other engineering disciplines lack the qualities that make industrial engineer-

ing attractive to women, those other disciplines certainly lack the concentration of women.As part of our larger research project, we have spoken to women from many other engineer-ing disciplines and they do not generally indicate that they “love” their major, their faculty,and the other students in their major in the way that the IE students describe. Our quanti-tative evidence shows that the foundational courses of the industrial engineering curriculaand the academic performance of the student population at the third semester are very sim-ilar to the curricula and performance of students in other engineering disciplines. This sug-gests that IE has not attracted a higher fraction of women by diluting their curricula, andthat it should be possible for other engineering disciplines to take measures to attract higherfractions of women as well—by creating a warm and positive atmosphere in a departmentwhere faculty and students genuinely care about each other and their success. It is possiblefor faculty to demonstrate a passion for their discipline and an excitement about passing thisknowledge to the next generation of engineers. Further, programs or disciplines making thisparadigm shift can be marketed in such a way as to promote their breadth, flexibility, and in-clusiveness of diverse people and ideas. Most engineering disciplines afford excellent careerpotential that can be marketed such that prospective students can understand and become

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excited about the broad array of possibilities for themselves in that field. By understandingwhat it is that makes industrial engineering attractive to women, other engineering disci-plines can apply this knowledge to diversify their populations.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation GrantNo. REC-0337629 (now DRL-0729596) and EEC-0646441, funding the Multiple-Institution Database for Investigating Engineering Longitudinal Development (MID-FIELD, a collaboration of nine partner universities) and a collaborative NSF Gender inScience and Engineering Research Grant (0734085 & 0734062). The opinions expressedin this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Nation-al Science Foundation. The authors wish to thank Laura Bottomley, Donna Llewellyn andCindy Waters for their valuable assistance with this project as well as Sharron Frillman foracting as assistant moderator and transcribing the focus groups.

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AUTHORS

Catherine E. Brawner is president of Research Triangle Educational Consultants,3504 Corin Court, Raleigh, NC 27612-4100; [email protected].

Michelle Madsen Camacho is associate professor in the Sociology Department and af-filiate faculty in the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of San Diego, 5998 Al-cala Park, San Diego, CA 92110; [email protected].

Russell A. Long is director of Project Assessment in Purdue University’s School of En-gineering Education, 500 Central Drive, Potter Engineering Center, Room 270, WestLafayette, IN 47907; [email protected].

Susan M. Lord is professor and coordinator of Electrical Engineering at the Universityof San Diego, 5998 Alcala Park, San Diego, CA 92110; [email protected].

Matthew W. Ohland is associate professor in Purdue University’s School of Engineer-ing Education, 701 West Stadium Avenue, Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering, WestLafayette, IN 47907-2045; [email protected].

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Women in Industrial Engineering: Stereotypes, Persistence ... · other engineering disciplines. Combining three sources of data: (1) a large quantitative data set of over 70,000 students