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WOMEN’S PARTICIPATION IN SWE AND SATISFACTION WITH THE
ENGINEERING PROGRAM
It will be recalled that among the female students, as shown in Chapter II-C, there
were some benefits to participating in Society for Women Engineers in addition to other
discipline-specific organizations: female students involved in SWE as well as another
professional organization were more active in enrichment activities, especially field trips
and with faculty, and were more likely to engage in “help” activities. Below we can see
how participation in SWE and the other organizations are related to the satisfaction of the
female students. Female students who participate in the engineering organizations tend to
be more satisfied with almost all aspects of the Rowan program and climate (Table IIE-
31). Although not all of the differences are statistically significant, the consistent trend
indicates that the women who participate in organizations are more likely to be satisfied
with the program’s offerings, coursework demands, faculty-student relationships, peer
relationships, and the teamwork in classes. There are no differences in satisfaction with
Rowan’s engineering clinic.
SWE seems to add to the satisfaction with classwork demands, but not to
satisfaction with the other aspects of the program. This may be related to the greater
participation of SWE members in “help” activities that we saw above (in Chapter II-C).
IIE-207