The majority were women, 78 percent of the health science professions majors and 60 percent of the agricultural and bio- logical sciences majors; and, they were sig- nificantly more likely than their male peers to persist and earn degrees in those disci- plines.
Despite reports that women drop out of STEM majors at much higher rates than men, George-Jackson found very little gen- der disparity in the departures—29 percent of women who began in STEM majors fully departed scientific study and earned degrees in non-STEM disciplines versus 24 percent of men. George-Jackson also examined the types of majors that students transferred into when they departed from high-status STEM majors such as computer science and engineering, something that prior stud- ies did not track, although the students’ de- partures were considered “losses” to the future scientific workforce. More than 54 percent of the women
who transferred out of high-status STEM majors obtained degrees in health sciences professions, while another 13 percent earned degrees in agricultural and biologi- cal sciences, indicating that women who departed from high status STEM majors migrated to other scientific disciplines. In other words, they did not abandon science altogether, as reports suggested. Overall, women tended to change ma- jors earlier in college, with more than 56 percent of women transferring out during their fourth year versus 35 percent of men. The timing of their departures could have implications for intervention programs aimed at retaining underrepresented stu- dents, George-Jackson wrote. “If we look at the women by race/eth-
nicity, it’s a very different story than if we look at women all together,” George-Jack- son said. “The ability to disaggregate on multiple levels is very important if we re- ally want to understand what’s going on with these students.”
Asian women were not only significant-
ly more likely to major in physical science, computer science, math or engineering ini- tially, but they also were more likely to per- sist and earn degrees in those disciplines (73 percent) than white women (64 per- cent), Hispanic women (62 percent) and black women (46 percent). George-Jackson’s study, titled “STEM Switching: Examining Departures of Un- dergraduate Women in STEM Fields,” has been accepted for publication in the Jour- nal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering. At the College of Education at the Uni-
versity of Illinois, George-Jackson teaches a course on higher education access and is also the director of STEM Trends in En- rollment and Persistence for Underrepre- sented Populations, shortened to Project STEP-UP, a research project that investi- gates factors that impact underrepresented undergraduate students’ educational out- comes in the STEM fields.
www.hnmagazine.com
Celebrating 19 Years of Diversity
HISPANIC NETWORK MAGAZINE 37
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