Gendered Pathways: From Florida's Two-Year Institutions to Computing Degrees

• In Event: Multiple Identities, Disparate Experiences: Community College Student Pathways in STEM

Abstract

Although community college students gravitate towards high-growth and often technical degree fields, community college pathways have been problematically under-examined as a mechanism for enhancing women’s representation in STEM (Perez-Felkner, Thomas, Nix, Hopkins, & D’Sa, 2019). Women constitute the majority of community college students, making these institutions may be particularly viable sites for enhancing women’s participation in computing fields. This paper investigates the gender gap in computing degree attainment among community college students in Florida, one of the most diverse states in the nation.

Theoretical Framework

Using Wang’s (2017) Momentum for Community College Student Success framework, we follow a diverse population of Florida’s community college students pursuing computing degrees. Gender’s effect on postsecondary STEM outcomes is mediated by students’ social contexts and academic experiences (Perez-Felkner, 2018). In adapting Wang’s framework to our focus on community college women pursuing computing degrees (Figure 1), we include contextual factors which may facilitate or impede community college students’ pursuit of computing degrees. The STEM momentum model was developed in Wisconsin, in a distinct and much more rural, white, less populated, and less immigrant-populated context (Chan & Wang, 2018; Wang, 2013), Florida’s students are more representative of the nation at large and thus may enhance and expand this theoretical model.

Methods

To what degree do women and men who begin in community college vary in their attainment of associate and bachelor’s degrees in computing? The investigator team will compare men and women’s probability of graduating with degrees in computing, in distinction to non-STEM and other STEM fields. Models will also assess intersectional dimensions to community college women’s computing degree attainment. The dataset includes the state of Florida’s K–20 Education Data Warehouse (EDW) postsecondary transcript data, coupled with rich measures of students’ demographic and family backgrounds and academic history, particularly in high school mathematics and science courses. Our data include first-time-in-college (FTIC) students in Florida’s 28 community colleges, 52% of which are women (Table 1).

Results

We initially focused our analyses on those students from the most recent cohort of data, who entered community college in Fall 2016. Of those students enrolled during a heightened attention to coding education from elementary through postsecondary education, 49% of those enrolled in computer science courses were women. Their earned grades in these courses were not significantly different from those of their male peers, nor were the courses notably different in rigor. In fact, the only descriptive difference observed by gender in this cohort favored women, who enrolled in courses above the 2000 level at a higher rate than their male peers. Subsequent analyses will parse these trends further.

Significance

While scholars are developing nuanced frameworks for understanding intersectional and field-specific patterns of variation in STEM participation and degree attainment (Rodriguez, Cunningham, & Jordan, 2017; Sax & Newhouse, 2019), researchers are just beginning to test these models. Our findings suggest women may be making gains in computing in community colleges, and that efforts to recruit and retain women in computing should go beyond the four-year college sector.

Authors

• Lara Perez-Felkner, Florida State University

• Shouping Hu, Florida State University