Professor Nilanjana Dasgupta stood in front of the crowd at Colton Chapel and started with a seemingly innocuous question:
“When you think of the quintessential scientist, engineer, or technologist, who pops into your mind?”
In a perfect world, the quintessential scientist or engineer is someone who is passionate, patient, and persistent. Someone who is dedicated to their work and puts forth a ton of effort. The opportunity to pursue a career in one of those fields should not be affected by one’s gender or race. Unfortunately, however, that is not always the case in our world today.
“Our assumption is that the quintessential person who is naturally inclined to be a scientist or engineer is male, mostly white, sometimes Asian, brainy, nerdy, but who’s missing?” Dasgupta asks.
The reality is that often the people who are missing are women and people of color. Women represent half of the world’s brain power, and represent an incredible amount of untapped human potential for success in STEM fields. With that in mind, imagine where we might be today if women had historically been given chances to succeed in these fields of study.
Professor Dasgupta and her work at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, examines the factors that prevent women and people of color from seeking advanced degrees in science and engineering fields. Her research explores whether increased contact with female professors, mentors, and peers would serve as an effective “social vaccine” to keep women in STEM fields. Social influences have big effects on young women who already may not feel welcome in a field dominated my male professors and students.
“Human being are social animals,” Dasgupta remarks. “Our choices are driven by a sense of belonging.”
And this lack of belonging is part of the reason why women and people of color are vastly underrepresented in these fields. When female students have mostly male professors and peers, they feel that they don’t fit the mold or the stereotype and therefore feel out of place.
“We tacitly assume people’s decisions for their career path are free choices driven purely by their talent and ability,” Dasgupta said. “In reality, these decisions are constrained by stereotypes.”
As students at Lafayette, knowing how to stay persevere through adversity in engineering or science fields is a crucial skill. Notwithstanding the fact STEM courses are inherently difficult given the vast amount of time and effort that is required, it is important to understand the social circumstances that can affect a woman’s interest in pursuing an engineering or science major. As one of the best undergraduate engineering programs in the country, we have an opportunity to be a leader in gender equality. But that effort starts with you, and we all have incredible resources at our disposal that we need to utilize.
With that in mind, what can YOU do to boost your chances of success in a STEM field?
1. Increase contact with faculty and older peers who share your gender so that you are able to imagine similar success in the future.
2. Witness success of women in STEM fields: look at research by female scientists & engineers, read their stories and biographies, and go to events highlighting women in these disciplines.
3. For classes involving team projects, avoid teams with a solo woman or a female minority.
4. Emphasize and understand the real-world relevance of STEM by connecting basic concepts taught in class to its social impact.
A growing amount of research suggests that contact with female peers and professors serves as an effective social vaccine to help keep women in STEM. Dr. Dasgupta conducted a longitudinal study where first-year female engineering students at UMass were paired with a senior peer mentor in the same field, and were instructed to meet once a month. The female students received either a male, female, or no peer mentor at all. Their progress in engineering was tracked from their first year to graduation.
The students who had female peer mentors felt a significantly stronger sense of belonging and confidence in engineering, and were significantly more likely to pursue an advanced degree in engineering. The takeaway here is that one single intervention during this first year of college for these female students made a massive difference. The students and mentors only met 4-8 times total and had lunch together. The women who originally had female mentors are holding steady in engineering, while the other two groups are going down.
“One single intervention, in that first year of college, did this enormous psychological work of protecting these women’s sense of confidence, their placement field, their sense of belonging in this field,” Dasgupta remarked. “And all of this happened only when the mentor was of the same gender.”
So get out there, meet some new people and get engaged with what you are studying, whatever that may be. We are all fortunate to be attending a school with such an emphasis on academic excellence, so don’t waste the opportunity to succeed and love what you do just because you might be the only one doing it. And don’t forget to use family members, professors, older students, and friends to help you along the way.