to see the entire research report - Rowan - Rowan University

program do not exhibit poorer pre-college preparation than do the men. We have also
shown that once they are in the engineering program they exhibit as much or more
satisfaction with the engineering program as men, and they perceive their contact with
faculty and peers as positively or more so than do male students. They are as active or
more in enrichment and help activities related to engineering. Further, gender gaps in
engineering self-confidence are often wider than what was found at Rowan, and at
Rowan are narrowed over the course of the academic year for most of the levels of the
program. In this chapter we attempt to link up these special qualities of the Rowan
experience with actual persistence in the program, to see whether we can explain the
relatively high retention of women in the program (shown below), especially compared to
the traditional gap in retention found elsewhere. We therefore explore the relationship
between retention and family and high school background characteristics, involvement in
engineering activities at Rowan, grades, engineering self-confidence and the change in
self-confidence over the academic year, and satisfaction with the Rowan program, for
both male and female students.
RETENTION IN THE PROGRAM
In this section we present the retention statistics for the Engineering Program
compiled by the Institutional Research division at Rowan, for students who began their
first semester at Rowan in engineering. In addition to the information about their college
major, we have the year the student started engineering and their gender.
Retention in engineering is measured in several different ways. First-year retention
means that students who began in an engineering major return to engineering for the Fall
IIF-213