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in their computer skills and in their speaking skills; males were more likely than females
to see an improvement in their mathematical ability.
TABLE IIH-2
PERCEIVED INCREASE IN ABILITY OR SKILL OVER ACADEMIC YEAR BY GENDER
(% perceiving increase)
Ability or Skill Males Females Total
Computer skills 66.9 79.1 69.6
Mathematical ability 63.0 49.3 60.0
Overall academic ability 58.0 61.2 58.7
Problem-solving skills 54.4 56.7 54.9
Critical thinking skills 51.7 55.2 52.5
Speaking skills 50.0 58.2 51.8
Writing skills 38.2 38.8 38.4
Thus, we can see that generally the engineering self-confidence of women in
engineering at Rowan is strengthened by their time at Rowan at least as much if not more
than that of male students, with the exception of the senior year, during which female’s
self-confidence that engineering is the right major for them is more likely to decline.
CHANGE IN ENGINEERING SELF-CONFIDENCE AND BACKGROUND
FACTORS
In this section we look at the changes in engineering self-confidence by background
factors, to consider whether students with particular background characteristics are
empowered more than others during the course of the academic year. While background
factors were related to self-confidence at the beginning of the year, the relationship was
stronger for first-year students than for most of the other students, and therefore we did
not expect background factors to have strong relationships with changes in self-
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