Mariel Kolker is an engineering teacher at Morristown High School in Morristown, NJ. In addition to teaching co-ed introductory engineering classes, Kolker recently taught an all-girls engineering class. She has spent some time studying the topic of women in engineering and learning about the best ways to educate girls. This blog is a part of Kolker's blog where she writes about diversity in engineering and things she has observed. ECN has proud to host these exclusive blogs, which are available only on ECNmag.com and Kolker's personal site.
As a second career educator, I teach physics to 9th graders and Principles of Engineering to upperclassmen. In the first three years we ran the engineering course, I was rooting for girls to sign up. Every year I’d wait to get my roster, to see the numbers of girls flocking to an engineering course taught by a woman engineer. The first year we had six girls. The next year we had two. Last year we had one girl. One. Girl.
Watch more: How do we keep students in STEM?
Secretly rooting and hoping gets you nowhere… so I took matters into my own hands. With the help of teachers who covered my classes during their preps, I visited 40+ science classrooms over two days to talk about science electives, including an all-girl engineering section. It’s worthwhile noting that we didn’t actually have an all-girls section to offer. But here was my thinking: if you build it they will come. Or in this case, if they come, you get to build it. So I spoke to the classes about taking engineering next year. And that we were thinking about running an all-girls section, and if we did, would you consider taking it?
Two months and hundreds of guidance counselor appointments later, the dust settled on course requests and we had sixty seven girls indicate interest in taking engineering.
Sixty seven.
With that number of girls, many of whom indicating the desire for an all-girls section only, what could administration say? This year we have 33 girls taking engineering, 23 of whom are in the all-girls section and 10 who are in the co-ed sections and happy to be there.
What made the difference? The fact is that the all-girls section was a possibility. My enthusiasm when speaking with their class was another. Or could simply it be that I invited them to take the class? The interesting number for me was not the sixty seven, but the substantial percentage within that group who indicated they didn’t care whether they were enrolled in the co-ed or all-girls section. Where were they last year? Could it be that it was just my telling them they could take engineering, that it was an option for them?
I started speaking to my freshman girls about taking engineering. I made a point of having a conversation with every one of my students who showed promise in math and physics, both boys and girls. I invited them to take engineering.
Read more: How an all-girls engineering class is changing education
During parent-teacher conferences I started telling parents that their daughter or son should consider engineering and AP physics in high school. The parents of boys were pleased. The parents of girls were surprised. During one such conversation, a shocked mother said her daughter wanted to be a vet, or a police officer. Now, those are both valid career choices, but I can’t help noticing they sound like the answer given by a second-grader when aunt Amanda asks, “What do you want to do when you grow up, honey?” In an email to another mother about her daughter possibly taking engineering next year, she replied, “I’m thrilled to hear she’s an engineering candidate.” Candidate? Well, there’s the difference. Boys think about being engineers, expect to take engineering, and have the confidence to pursue it. Girls, I am finding, don’t see themselves as engineers or even think about engineering until asked.
This is, at its heart, a cultural issue. The dearth of women in engineering and computer science, the lack of role models at the head of corporations and in Congress, and the way women are represented by Hollywood and the media all teach girls what they should expect of themselves. Perhaps in the asking, we are giving girls permission to see themselves in these roles.
My grandmother used to say to my sister and me, “it’s polite to wait until you’re asked.” Until young girls are seeing themselves as future engineers and programmers, perhaps what we need to do is invite them in.
