Beth Holloway is the Director of the Women in Engineering Program and a part-time PhD student in ENE.  Her academic background is in mechanical engineering and she worked in industry for nine years.  Her research area of interest is, not surprisingly, related to women in engineering.

Qu Jin is a third-year graduate student in the School of Engineering Education at Purdue. She works with Dr. P. K. Imbrie. She received an M.S. degree in Biomedical Engineering from Purdue University and a B.S. degree in
Material Science and Engineering from Tsinghua University in China. Her research focuses on modeling students' success outcomes, which include placement, retention, GPA, and graduation.

The work I'm presenting is about gender difference in the important predictors of success in engineering.

Julia Thompson is a third-year Ph.D. student in the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University. She received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from UC Berkeley and then worked as a chemical engineer at an energy-consulting firm prior to coming to Purdue.  Her primary research investigates the impacts of project-based service learning on community partners.

The percentage of women entering engineering has stayed relatively constant during the last two decades, even decreasing some over the last five years. However, when examining levels of interest and participation across the full spectrum of engineering, we find wide variations. Women have relatively high levels of representation in environmental, biomedical and industrial engineering, especially as compared to fields such as computer and mechanical. In this presentation I discuss how those engineering fields aligned with feminine morality, which is in part defined by its emphasis on working with and helping others, have a much higher representation of women. I conclude with the idea that if we truly want to create a more inclusive engineering community, such values must be embraced and embodied more widely.

Lorie Groll is a second-year doctoral student in engineering education. She has a master's in counseling and a strong research interest in how gender, race and class shape and are shaped by an engineering experience.

The work I am presenting focuses on advisors perceptions of first-year engineering students' advice seeking behaviors. This information was presented at the 2011 WEPAN conference in June.