Hailey Smith, Kelsey Wasilczuk, Jennie Boehm and Jessica Place; all members of last fall’s EPICS program.
The movement to bring more women into STEM education recently reached another milestone. Purdue has just announced that their EPICS learning community program has, for the first time, seen a near even split between the sexes.
The Engineering Projects in Community Service program, or EPICS, features Purdue’s older students acting as mentors to the freshman. This partnership sees these engineering students create designs to help society on both the local and global level. Students also participate in extracurricular classes and shared residences.
Professor and EPICS director William Oakes teaches the extra-curricular classes. The classes cover topics ranging from engineering disciplines to English to communication. A thorough understanding of each topic is fundamental to an engineer’s professional future.
Oakes predicts that the program’s community service and real-life experience is what attracts the large female ratios. If so, this can be a lesson to other organizations – from GoldieBlox to Women in Engineering and Girl Guides – on how to promote STEM education to women and girls. Currently, Purdue’s female engineering percentage is at 23%. While this is above the national average of 19.5%, it is far from the 50% seen in the EPICS program. Clearly there is still a lot of work to be done by all these organizations.
Oaks said, “If we are going to achieve our goals of increasing diversity in engineering, we need to set our sights on gender balance … We have gotten close to gender balance with our high school EPICS programs, but this is the first time we have achieved it with an EPICS class entering college. I am thrilled to be able to teach such a diverse class of students who will be making a difference in the world while they learn engineering.”
It is clear that the community aspect is of great interest to many students. Katherine Schnotzer, a civil engineering junior said, "Being a part of the EPICS Learning Community was one of the best decisions I made when coming to Purdue … It allowed me to immediately make a group of friends who were in my classes and that I could go to because they lived right next door. It is a great, small environment where you get to meet with professors, go to special learning community-only events, and find some of your best friends for the next four years."
The EPICS program has been recognized by the National Academy of Engineering, NSF, Women in Technology, IEEE and the American Society for Engineering Education since it started in 1995. It has seen an average of 400 students enroll per semester and is in more than 20 universities and 60 high schools.
Source Purdue