Engineering and Title IX--The NEA Gives an Opinion

I talked a few months ago about how some were hoping to expand the proportionality principles of Title IX to academic subjects like math and engineering. It worked to create a generation of female athletes, the argument goes, so why not to create a generation of female mathematics all-stars?

I don't see the sucess potential. Programs that introduce girls to the sciences and make them want to enter the STEM fields I have no problem with, but were Title IX to be applied to the academics the same way it has been to the athletics (e.g., "60% of your students overall are female, so your engineering students should be 60% female as well"), I think it would be a step back.

The NEA gave the issue their nod of support in the May 2008 NEA Today magazine. This isn't surprising for an organization that has made diversity one of their keystone issues, but I'm not sure they thought the argument all the way through.

For perspective from the other side, this website is comprehensive.

Read more here, if any.

STEM Week Continues

Out of Texas comes a possible model for how to train science and math teachers, both to improve practice and to increase the number that choose to go into the classroom. From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Many high-school chemistry students would probably love a teacher like Robert A. Gonzales.

During a class at James Bowie High School here last month, he asked his students to figure out the alignment of atoms within different molecules — using marshmallows. Put the tiny, white sweets, representing different atoms, on toothpicks, he suggested, and build a little model that shows the shape when charged atoms repel each other.

The students got busy, giggling. They were stumped on one molecule, ammonia. Mr. Gonzales, who majored in chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin, demonstrated the right configuration by balancing on one leg, his arms spread to either side, head cocked down. The students laughed some more — and listened.

Mr. Gonzales credits their attention, and his creative approach that attracts it, to the preparation he received from an acclaimed, unusual program at Austin called UTeach. Congress and the National Academy of Sciences have singled out UTeach in recent years as a promising model to help fill a national shortage of qualified schoolteachers in science and mathematics. The program has doubled the annual number of Austin's bachelor's-degree recipients certified to teach those subjects in secondary schools.

Now UTeach has a chance to go national. Last month a foundation backed by ExxonMobil announced that the UTeach model had so much promise that the group would make grants of $2.4-million each to 12 other universities to copy it.

It sounds like a good idea.

Read more here, if any.

STEM Week, Day 2: A Little Bit More on the Women and STEM Discussion

In the December 21st edition of the Careers section of the Chronicle of Higher Education there’s a column from Rex Sayers (a pseudonym) about the effect that having children can have on the career paths of those in academe. His belief is that having children of your own can make you a better teacher, even if it lowers your productivity (read: writing and research) and impacts your career path.

That brings me to the effects of a new baby on an academic's ability to practice his or her craft, a topic on which there has been much debate. I am here to affirm that those effects are real and primarily negative. Before this latest birth, I had been working at a pretty good clip. I had a high teaching load, so it was hard to find time to write during the day, but I had developed a routine of putting the kids to bed and knocking out a page or two before my own bedtime.

Not anymore. Not only have we lost the luxury of a consistent bedtime, but in those seemingly rare moments when I do find myself with a free, childless hour in which to work, I'm simply too fogged to produce.

The reason that I think teaching appeals to many is that it’s a family-friendly career. Your breaks will typically be the same as those of your children; your child can be in your workplace with you; you can be a part of your child’s life while at the same time participating in your profession. Given that the primary caregiver role still tends to fall on the mother, it’s easy to see why women would choose teaching as a career.

Read more here, if any.

STEM Week Day 1: Engineering: A Title IX Issue?

The December issue of the ASCD’s Education Update focuses on the 35th anniversary of Title IX, the landmark federal law that opened up the doors for women to have equal opportunity in athletics and education. It’s a good law that needed to happen, but I’m curious about where the ASCD sees things going. From the newsletter (p. 3):

The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) and other organizations are employing Title IX to ensure that women are equally represented in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. In February 2007, Michelle Tortolani, then SWE president-elect, asked at the National Association of Multicultural Engineering national conference, “Why, while girls comprise 55 percent of undergraduate students, do they account for only 20 percent of engineering majors, and boys remain four times more likely to enroll in undergraduate engineering programs?”

Two Congressional briefings have focused on strengthening the STEM workforce by asking this question: Are more women and members of diverse groups needed in the STEM workforce? Resoundingly, SWE says “Yes” and offers the following recommendations:

*Policymakers should step up enforcement of Title IX with regard to STEM disciplines and fund programs that will help educate students, their parents, and STEM faculty of their rights under the law.

*Educational institutions should fulfill their obligations under the law; examine their institutional policies, procedures, or practices for gender bias; provide suggestions for areas to examine when evaluating programs for gender bias; and make this information accessible to the public.

*Federal funding agencies should fulfill their monitoring and enforcement obligations under the law, and make this information available to the public.

I know that as a male I’m probably better off running as fast as I can and as far as I can from anything having to do with Title IX, but on the face of it there’s a lot of problems that I see here.

The first is the difference between a bias of design and a bias of choice. If a program is structured in such a way that people are excluded on the basis of their gender or race, that’s immoral and should be addressed. It’s a different matter, though, when those of one gender tend to gravitate towards a career more than those of the other as a matter of choice. If more men are drawn to the engineering life, with it’s nerdy stereotype and long hours, is that a problem of the system, of the sexes, or of the society?

We have an example in our own field—elementary teachers are almost 90% women. With its family friendly policies and the chance to work with kids, that’s not a surprise. What it’s also not is discrimination, and anyone arguing that it is would be wrong.

Programs that expose girls to the STEM fields, like those that come across the WSTA listserv? Excellent! This nascent suggestion that we should have proportionality in the college programs, because equal must be inherently more fair? That’s an idea that takes us down a weird, exclusionary road that we’re better off not traveling.

And let’s also acknowledge that there’s a bias on the pro-girl side as well. In a section on the ongoing challenges associated with Title IX we find:

Young women represent the vast majority of students enrolled in high school cosmetology, child care, and health assistant courses. Child care workers earn a median salary of $7.43 per hour, while cosmetologists earn a median salary of $8.49 per hour.

We need good child care workers every bit as much as we need engineers. That the ASCD would tie the worth of the job to the pay is a sad statement of the priorities that we’ve established as a society, and shame on them for taking the bait. That someone could make more in engineering than hairdressing is a given, but why imply that there’s something wrong with wanting to be a hairdresser?

For anyone interested in gender equity in the mathematics and sciences, this is an article well worth finding.

Is there a problem with males being over represented in the STEM fields? How would you solve it?

Read more here, if any.