The sucess of women in engineering programs - Essay Example

Upon the arrival to higher education the female students are recruited and enrolled in the engineering field. There are several established mentoring programs that are offered to the female students so that they start well, maintain the interest, maintain a high Grade Point Average (GPA), remain in the engineering field, graduate successfully from their undergraduate programs, and pursue graduate work in engineering and/or work as engineers. WEPAN (2005) also recognizes the achievements made by women engineers, such as honoring them with The Betty Vetter Award for Research.

There are professional organizations and advocate groups (WEPAN, 2005) that offer workshops, lectures, and seminars geared toward the female engineers. This serves as a support system to help them become interested in engineering, maintain them in engineering, and help them become female engineer leaders. They are also given awards in recognition of their active participation in research related topics to women in engineering (WEPAN, 2005). Female engineers are given a variety of tools to support them in their endeavors of becoming and staying in the engineering fields as successful engineers.

WEPAN (2005) also has The Women in Engineering Initiative (WIEI) Award that gives recognition to outstanding programs or projects to serve as a model to other institutions. Their selection criteria is that: it serves as a model, shares experiences and materials with other institutions; serves as a model for programming formal pre-college or retention activities/projects; shows improvements in education for women in engineering; and, provides professional guidance to students and/or faculty seeking engineering and science as a career or profession.

The Student Outreach Program – Evaluation Tools AWE – Assessing Women in Engineering Project develops assessment instruments and models; assesses program activities to achieve success in the recruiting of women