Our Words Do Matter

by Jennifer VanAntwerp, February 16, 2022

Women and their work are valued less in our society. This cultural bias can be measured in the very way that we use, and change our use of, language in describing the types of work we do in STEM.

It's no secret that pushing STEM (science, engineering, technology, and math) participation is a hot topic in the U.S. What might be less well-recognized is that not all STEM is considered to be equal – and this has real (and negative) consequences for women.

New research by psychologists Alysson Light, Tessa Benson-Greenwald, and Amanda Diekman has revealed biases in how we describe, perceive, and value the various STEM fields. Study participants from all walks of life were presented with brief (and true) descriptions of different STEM fields (including some physical sciences, some social sciences, and some engineering). However, none of the descriptions were identified by name. In addition, a gender composition for the unnamed field was provided – but participants were randomly assigned to groups that were either told the field just described included mostly males or told that that same field was majority female. They were then asked to categorize each field as a “soft science” or a “hard science.”

It turned out that the exact same description was significantly more likely to be labeled by participants as a soft science if the respondent believed the field to include more women than men. The opposite was true for majority men and the hard science label – regardless of which discipline was actually being described. In other words, there is a strong cultural bias that women do something called soft science and men do something called hard science.

Wikipedia tells us that "hard and soft science are colloquial terms used to compare scientific fields on the bases of perceived methodological rigor, exactitude, and objectivity." This naturally sets up soft sciences as being inferior to hard sciences; it implies a societal judgement that soft science is pseudoscience – less difficult, less reliable, less valuable. In fact, additional results from this same research study make it quite clear how these perceived soft/hard sciences differences are valued. When Light and colleagues asked participants to evaluate the value of a discipline based only on its label as a hard or soft science, the soft sciences lost on every single measure. As the study authors conclude, “the general category of soft sciences is perceived as less rigorous, less trustworthy, and less worthy of funding than hard sciences.”

But why does the lower valuation of soft sciences matter to engineers? Clearly engineering disciplines are firmly in the hard sciences camp, right? Well, it matters because at a subconscious level, women are associated with these less respected and less valued fields of work. The spillover from this is that at a subconscious level, all women suffer a blow to their credibility, status, and contribution as members of STEM fields – including those women in engineering.

So perhaps it is no surprise, then, that women engineers are 2.9 times as likely as men engineers to report “I have to repeatedly prove myself to get the same level of respect and recognition as my colleagues” and 2.8 times more likely than men to agree that “After moving from an engineering role to a project management/business role, people assume I do not have technical skill.”  (And unfortunately, research also has demonstrated that engineers place more value on technical skills than communication, planning, managerial, or similar essential skills.) No surprise that women working in STEM are less likely than men to have their ideas endorsed by leadership or green-lighted for development.

They are judged, whether explicitly or implicitly, to be less of a “fit” for more “rigorous” or “hard science” work. And in some ways, it might not matter even if women do manage to get assigned to these more valued job assignments. Simply because more women are doing a job, it can come to be less valued. Yet one more example of women engineers facing the “damned if you do; damned if you don’t” barrier. 

Have you had a similar experience to Our Words do Matter or would you like to share a story, concern, or experience that relates to what you have just read?  Click here to share (all responses are private and kept confidential).

 

Jennifer J. VanAntwerp is a professor of chemical engineering at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She researches how engineers learn, work, and thrive, beginning in college and extending throughout their professional careers.

Gender Bias in Student Evaluations of Teaching

by Denise Wilson, November 10, 2021

Student evaluations of teaching (SET) were originally designed to be formative by providing  valuable input to instructors in higher education. When used as a tool for improving teaching, student responses to close-ended and short-answer answer questions on SETs can provide helpful feedback to instructors as well as those who mentor or otherwise work with instructors on professional development. 

Since their initial introduction, however, SET  have continued to shift from formative to summative.  In many institutions, the ratings provide by students on a just a small subset of items far overshadow the short answers and other items that in total, provide a more comprehensive picture of college teaching.  The numbers within this subset of ratings are often used in key decisions for promotion , tenure, hiring, and firing. 

Using this shorter list of SET numbers is convenient and quick. Unfortunately, there is plenty of evidence that these ratings are biased and are not consistent or adequate measures of student learning (a short review of the literature can be found here). Gender bias, where female instructors consistently receive lower ratings than their male peers for the same courses or for different sections within the same course, is especially well documented. Such bias generates concern about how SET ratings are used by higher education institutions to evaluate women instructors and how these ratings impact the future morale and effectiveness of the women who read them and take them to heart.     

Recently, our research team compared student perceptions of how well faculty supported them in their courses with how those same students rated those faculty on student evaluations of teaching in engineering courses at one large public university. We compared a pair of median scores:  Instructor Effectiveness in the Course (SET) and Students' Sense of Faculty Support (our survey).

Instructor Effectiveness was measured using the median score from one item on the university SET form:  "The instructor's effectiveness in teaching the subject matter was:" Students had the option of selecting Excellent (5), Very Good (4), Good (3), Fair (2), Poor (1).  

Students' Sense of Faculty Support was measured in a research-based survey that was not affiliated with the university's educational assessment office.   Faculty support contained eleven items that had been validated in multiple previous studies in higher education and had a high internal consistency (reliability) of 0.92:

• The professor in this class is willing to spend time outside of class to discuss issues that are of interest and importance to me.
• The professor in this class is available when I need help.
• The professor in this class is interested in helping me learn.
• The professor in this class cares about how much I learn.
• The professor in this class treats me with respect.
• The professor has clearly explained course goals and requirements.
• The professor teaches in an organized way
• The professor often uses real-world examples or illustrations to explain difficult points.
• The professor often stays after class to answer questions.
• The professor often stops to ask questions during class.
• The professor is often funny or interesting.

All of the above items were rated on a scale from Strongly Agree (5) to Strongly Disagree (1).  

When we compared SET Instructor Effectiveness to Students' Sense of Faculty Support, we found that when asked a general question about instructor effectiveness, students exhibited negative bias toward women relative to more specific (and objective) questions about faculty support behaviors.  Students completed both the instructional support surveys (that contained the Faculty Support items described previously) and SET in the last 2-3 weeks of the term associated with the course being evaluated.   Four of the five female instructors (80%) in the study received higher Faculty Support ratings than their SET ratings would suggest while only three of the nine (33%) of the male instructors did so (female instructors are shown in red; male instructors in blue):

These results also show that students rated women lower in instructor effectiveness than men while still reporting that these same women offered them levels of support that were above the trendline for the entire dataset.    

What does this data really tell us?  First, it tells us that the correlation between general impressions of instructor effectiveness and more specific reports of faculty support is not particularly good.   Our data also reinforce the idea that women often receive lower SET scores than men for similar levels of instructional support and teaching quality.   Alongside other related research that demonstrates this type of negative bias against women, these results reinforce the call to rethink how we evaluate teaching among engineering faculty and instructors.  In a time when equity is central to the radar of many colleges of engineering around the country, gender bias in SET underscores the need to transform the conversation we have about student evaluations of teaching -- both those held in meetings with other faculty and administrators and those held inside one's head when SET reports deliver negative and deflating messages after a semester of long hours and hard work.  

As a country, we need excellence in teaching too much to compromise it by demoralizing good teachers with faulty rating systems. We can do better.

Have you had a similar experience to Our Words do Matter or would you like to share a story, concern, or experience that relates to what you have just read?  Click here to share (all responses are private and kept confidential).

Denise Wilson is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. Her research interests in engineering education focus on belonging, engagement, and instructional support in the undergraduate engineering classroom.   

Sexual Harassment Starts Early in Engineering

Sexual harassment doesn't always look like the obvious and egregious cases we read about in the the newspaper. But even "milder" forms of harassment can have lasting and serious effects. The first step to improving the culture is recognizing that nobody should have to "grow a thicker skin" or accept that "boys will be boys" in order to participate in engineering. Both women and men need to stop excusing the behavior.

When my daughter was in 9th grade, she wanted to take her high school’s Introduction to Technology course. I was of course supportive of her interest and encouraged her to sign up, thinking nothing more of it. A few weeks into the fall, she mentioned to me that she was the only girl in the class. I expressed surprise that this was still the case in this day and age. I recalled how thirty years earlier, I had been the only girl in an accelerated middle school math class, but that was a generation ago! Of course, I know that there is still a significant gender imbalance in engineering and technology, but surely not to such a degree, and not so early in the pipeline as 9th grade! I told her I was proud of her for being there and that I knew she was self-confident enough to manage that strange situation just fine. Which she would have been if it had only been a slightly awkward classroom context.

A few weeks later, she dropped some oblique comments about how a couple of the guys at her table grouping were being obnoxious – making some crude comments; teasing her; tugging on her hair. She didn’t seem particularly upset by it; just annoyed. So, I basically dismissed it. I agreed with her that it was obnoxious, then I told her to just ignore them. Told her that some high school boys can be real jerks before they manage to “grow up.”  I didn’t think much more of it, until the day she broke out in tears after school. This was out of character, and I suddenly realized something was really wrong.

It turned out that my daughter had just been following my lead. I had signaled to her that “boys will be boys,” and we just have to ignore it and get on with our own work. But I had failed to really listen to my daughter when she spoke up before. Perhaps she sensed from me that I have personally have more of a tendency to put up with bad behavior with only annoyance and dismissal. Or perhaps she was really embarrassed to relate the details. Whatever her thinking, she had been downplaying to me what had really been happening, until she just couldn’t anymore. 

I was horrified as she finally was able to share more of the details with me. It turned out that she was a target of really serious sexual harassment. There were not only dirty jokes intended to embarrass her – she found obscene images left on her desktop. The boys had progressed from touching her hair to bumping into her “accidentally.” There were two boys in the seating group of the four of them who were the active offenders, but the third boy knew what was going on and never made any effort to intervene.

Once I understood the scope and seriousness of the problem, I went immediately to her school. The response sounded right – the administrator promised swift discipline. The teacher expressed shock that this had been happening in his classroom; I confess I was a bit dubious about this and wondered how much deliberate obliviousness was involved to avoid dealing with a difficult classroom management issue. He offered to assign another student in the class to essentially be a chaperone – to be another set of eyes to watch out for my daughter and intervene when needed. Of course, this only served to set her apart even further, and reinforced her “victim” image with the class, as someone who needed extra support to handle the class. And I confess that in my ignorance, I overlooked subsequent situations in which I should have intervened on her behalf. I failed to anticipate all the ways the school would continue to fail her, including not protecting her from being scheduled in future semesters for class sections that included the offenders.   

I am proud that my daughter was mature and emotionally strong enough to be able to channel this devastating experience into positive outcomes. She educated herself by volunteering at the local shelter for victims of domestic abuse and she relentlessly advocated throughout the next four years to try to convince the administration to implement sexual harassment training for all students and teachers. And she has gone on to study engineering in college. But I am still devastated that the profession to which I have given my life had already failed her so miserably, and I am still devastated that I, who certainly should have known better, acted too slowly to be part of the solution. I had never personally suffered under behaviors this extreme. But it wasn’t just a case of not really recognizing what was happening – because I should have been stopping this even if things were a lot less severe. I think after my decades being “one of the guys” in so many settings, I had learned to go along to get along, and just ignore a lot. But it shouldn’t be that way – and if I am not speaking up, then I am part of the problem.

Now, a few years later, I have some perspective on the situation. I wish sexual harassment would have gone the way of the dinosaurs by now. But it hasn’t. And it occurs more often in engineering and technology settings than it does in general. So, regardless of my own experiences or observations of harassment, I hope that I now better recognize what I need to be doing. I need to recognize that just going along with it – the locker room behavior, the “just joking” moments – is unacceptable in any school or work setting. And my personal threshold for tolerance is not necessarily a good marker for what crosses the line. It is not too much to ask for civil and professional behavior from everyone in the engineering sphere: the managers, the engineering colleagues (men and women), the technicians and operators and tradespeople, the clients, the instructors (university and K-12), and the other students. In fact, it is the law. And we each have an obligation to protect, and even demand, that. For the sake of my colleagues. For the sake of the next generation of engineers. For the sake of the profession of engineering. We can all do better.

Have you had a similar experience to Sexual Harassment in Engineering, or would you like to share a story, concern, or experience that relates to what you have just read?  Click here to share (all responses are private and kept confidential).

Three Beers and a Rape Myth

 A Story from the Engineering Research World

Some topics should remain off limits at professional events.  But when no one is looking and alcohol is flowing, conversations can easily spin out of control. The following is a typical story of how quickly a conversation can shift from professional business talk to topics that are not only inappropriate but trigger fear and anxiety for the women at the table.  

As a graduate student, when I had my first paper accepted to a technical conference, I was both excited and nervous.  Would I pull off the presentation smoothly?  Or would I choke and forget any number of technical details regarding the circuit I was presenting?  Or worse, would I become suddenly unable to utter a single articulate sentence and go down in flames of embarrassment? 

I pondered all these possibilities while over-preparing for the three-day, regional conference where I would be presenting my research paper. In between making slides and re-rehearsing, I would think about the upcoming trip with some excitement. I was looking forward to entering into the world of technical conferences, presenting my research, and learning far more from others in a short few days than I could reading on my own or working solely with my lab mates.  And, while I was keenly aware that my intellectual credibility was on the line with a tough audience at the upcoming conference, it never occurred to me that my physical safety might be called into question. 

On the first day of the conference, several of my fellow graduate students (all male) and I drove the two hundred some odd miles to the conference venue. Funding was in short supply and driving was the least expensive of our options.  After arriving safely and checking in to our hotel, we headed out to dinner. It was hot and humid, so I dispensed with business casual clothing and wore the coolest options I could find in my suitcase. Consistent with graduate student budgets, we all headed to an inexpensive bar and grill. I slid into the booth first and perused the menu with great interest, looking for the most calories for the fewest number of dollars. The food was what you expect at a bar and grill.  Filling, not particularly healthy, but well priced. I was still working on my first beer when the rest of the guys were on their second or third. They spent most of the meal talking technical. I listened to their conversation at first but after a while, my mind wandered, and I drifted toward observing the other diners for a change of pace.

When my mind came back to planet Earth, the topic of conversation had shifted drastically.   One of the guys who was on his third beer had started talking about rape (exactly how anyone could go from talking about circuits to talking about rape in a matter of minutes was beyond me).  In the next few minutes, he rambled on about the many things women did that invited rape.  Short skirts. Tight dresses.  Cleavage on display. Big smiles.  The list was pretty long. I wondered what kind of women did not qualify for rape according to Mr. Three Beers' ongoing description of the many things that women did to invite and deserve it. 

At first, I felt like a detached observer of the conversation. Then, I wrote it off as a function of the three beers I'd watch this guy drink. I expected the conversation to shift. I expected someone to step in and redirect it. But, as the guy went on and on, I started to squirm in my seat. I was trapped in the booth and would have had to draw attention to myself to get out of the situation and leave (never mind that I had no way back to the hotel but with these guys and the one car we shared). I became more and more aware of the short summer skirt and tank top I'd worn to deal with the heat and humidity. I'd left my phone in the room and pondered my options for getting back to the hotel some other way. I tried to keep my facial expressions calm and unperturbed. I tried to keep my anger in check. I stayed quiet. It seemed like the safest option.  

And when the dinner finally and mercifully ended and I was back at the hotel and out of the car, it took all of my self-control not to run back to my room. But of course, then there was the other issue: my faculty PhD advisor had required us to double up in rooms "for budgetary reasons." I was the only female in the group and deserved no special considerations so there I was... in the same room as one of the guys who listened to what Mr. Three Beers had to say without saying a single word. Great.  

Surprise, surprise: I didn't sleep much that night. The dinner conversation rolled around in my head as I tossed and turned. I had never heard of normalizing rape or rape mythos or rape culture before. It was my first exposure to a man who seemed to genuinely believe that women often brought rape upon themselves. While I had no doubt that Mr. Three Beers deserved some damage to his private parts for his position on the subject, I certainly wasn't going to do anything or say anything considering the precarious position that limited research funds had left me in.  So, on guard, I tried to rest and didn't sleep. Tried to focus on technical matters, but thought about Mr. Three Beers instead.  

The next day was my paper presentation.  You'll never guess how it went.

Have you had a similar experience to this blog (Three Beers and a Rape Myth) or would you like to share a story, concern, or experience that relates to what you have just read?  Click here to share (all responses are private and kept confidential).

 

The Cost of Low Empathy

Research has shown that engineers, on average, have lower empathy than those working in a wide range of other disciplines. Unfortunately, low empathy can lead to poor relationships in the workplace which in turn, lead to less predictability of both behavior and emotions. Such uncertainty then leads to withdrawal and a lack of care which ultimately reduces the creativity and synergy of working engineers. 

The following story explores how a relatively few dispassionate, disconnected, low-empathy remarks and behaviors at work can cause a whole lot of pain when delivered at the wrong time and wrong place in an individual's life -- leading to long term loss of trust in coworkers and managers and withdrawal from the workplace.  

I'll never forget that day in October when I was pulling into my driveway after a very long day at work and the phone rang. The last thing I wanted to do was answer it, but it was the same unknown number that I had received a call from (and not answered) earlier in the day. I answered the phone, discovered I was talking to one of my mother's neighbors, and listened speechless as the kind neighbor recounted my mother's visit to the emergency room the day before. A tumor had exploded in her abdomen, causing such pain that it finally overcame my mother's stubborn resistance to doctors of all sorts and landed her in the ER with a doctor who was nothing short of callous in delivering her late stage cancer diagnosis. 

Fast forward to several months later.  I worked as an engineer in a high-stress high-tech job that demanded much of my time and energy and had little space for a personal life.  Working among engineers, I had also learned to hide my more intense emotions whenever possible. Unfortunately, since my mother's diagnosis, intense emotions were more the rule than the exception and I had spent much time strategically turning my head away or excusing myself to the restroom when tears sprang into my eyes unbidden and unwieldy. During those first few months, I only escaped work twice to fly the thousands of miles to see my mother. She had refused treatment for the cancer, including surgery, and I dreaded the months ahead of her.  

And just when I thought I might be getting a handle on managing my mom's situation, she became suicidal. This added panic and horror on top of grief and worry. Working long hours went from difficult to impossible. When my mother first settled on suicide, she decided to stop eating. After a month of this, I was on another cross-continental flight. When each situation was resolved, there was always something else. While still intent on starving herself to death, she became a danger to herself with kitchen knives. It was all too much and despite the looming work deadline, it was time for me to put work away and focus on her...completely. 

In June, I took off on another flight across the country.  After five days with my mother, the emails started rolling in; my boss said "the customers need you."  "Need me for what?" I wanted to say; try as I might, I could not come up with any serious consequence for missing my deadline for a few weeks. The world was simply not going to end as a result of the delay nor was the company going to go down in flames. But, I felt the pressure to show no weakness and keep marching on at work as if my whole life had not been turned upside down.

When I wrote to my boss, informing him that I needed time and I couldn't return to work right away because my mother had terminal cancer, he responded by telling me that the customers had to have what we promised them NOW.  Then he said "I hope your mother gets better soon." What part of "terminal" was he missing or misunderstanding?  Or was it simply that he could care less? 

Against my better judgement, I flew back to work and rejoined the "team." That lasted only a short time until I heard from that same kind neighbor who had called me months earlier that my mother was discovered contemplating knives at considerable length. Specifically, she seemed to be considering how to end her life with the assistance of one or more of them. I made a last minute airplane reservation and tried to hang on through one last meeting. There was an important vote to cast at the end of the meeting making it inappropriate and practically impossible for me to leave prior to the vote.  When the meeting ran over, by 15 minutes then half and hour and then only because a coworker wanted to go on about something at length which could have easily been postponed to another time, I lost all patience. I interrupted my rambling coworker to say "My mother is committing suicide and I need to catch a flight; can we wrap this up please?" The coworker did not acknowledge my interruption but went on as if nothing had been said. No one in the room said a word nor helped bring the meeting to a close. Fifteen minutes later, when the vote had finally been cast, I ran out of the room and began the impossible race to the airport. Once on the plane, I could barely keep myself sane. I was crazy worried about my mother and furious with my coworker.  

To bring the story to a close, my mother passed away two short weeks later by her own will and hand.  As the waves of grief rolled in, I couldn't possibly go back to work as normal. I attempted to postpone an important meeting until I could get back on my feet and return to some semblance of normal, no matter how temporary.

How did the senior engineer who was in charge of the meeting respond to my request to postpone?  His words were brief but the impact was not: "No. Everyone's mother dies."

Some might excuse these remarks and events as simply insensitive rather than intentionally hostile.

But the label on their behavior didn't matter.  What mattered is that they had masterfully added trauma on top of trauma and left me in a place where recovery was longer and harder than it ever needed to be.   

And as for giving it all to my work.  That ended the day my mother passed away.

 

Have you had a similar experience to this blog (The Cost of Low Empathy) or would you like to share a story, concern, or experience that relates to what you have just read?  Click here to share (all responses are private and kept confidential).

 

The Importance of Money?

This true story seeks to shed light on one of the many ways in which employers can fail to recognize  that sexual harassment makes for an unsafe workplace and to react accordingly.  

As an associate professor at a top tier research university, I had acquired a healthy dislike for chasing after research funding.  Writing grant proposals often took two to three times the amount of time that was needed to actually do the research and I was often painfully aware of how much more research I could be doing if I didn't have to write all those proposals. Just as frustrating was the sense I often had that the research wasn't really going anywhere. Even though most of my lab's positive results landed somewhere in the vast number of publications in my technical research area, I lacked both the expertise and the time to create a useful commercial product out of any of it. 

Frustration had become my faithful sidekick.  

So when I had an opportunity to work with a small company on an instrument that my lab had developed to deliver environmental monitoring and healthcare diagnostic capability at a fraction of the cost of similar instruments on the market, I was thrilled. As an engineer, it was in my blood to apply the technology I developed into a useful product and working with a small company toward commercialization was far more exciting to me than writing another journal or conference article.  

Commercialization came within even closer reach when my partnership with this small company resulted in a successful small business grant from a federal agency.  I was delighted and quickly lost myself in the process of building a working prototype of the instrument we had proposed. After months of hard work and a few rabbit holes that were inevitable in engineering research and development, my lab produced a working prototype that did not work perfectly but worked well enough for proof-of-concept and demonstration to potential investors.  I handed over the prototypes to my small business partner and began the unpleasant business of completing all the documentation and the patent paperwork.  My business partner told me that he was in the process of securing additional investment to go ahead with commercialization. He had laid out milestones for how this process was going to move forward in the small business grant proposal we had secured and while I supervised my part of the project, I waited for results from his side.  

But then. And then.  Unfortunately however.  Pick your transition into disappointment.

One day, I got an email from him suggesting that I join him on the other side of the country to make a presentation to a group who was interested in the work, its commercialization, and advancing the project to the next level. Funds were short, he said. He then suggested that we simply share a hotel room to save money on this necessary "business" trip.  

My heart sank when I received the email.  I was bitterly disappointed. But, after a day of steaming and getting over the shock of the "invitation", I knew there was no choice but to be direct and simply say no.   I told him just that, in a three-line, matter-of-fact email. 

But then. And then. Unfortunately however.  Pick your next transition into more disappointment.

Months passed and I heard nothing.  The prototype that my team had painstakingly built and tested disappeared into the ether along with my supposed business partner.  And in the process, he also stopped paying bills to the university, leaving me on the hook for paychecks that had already been cut and having no choice but to let research assistants go and disrupt their education. After scrambling to make up for the payments never made, I remained in the red in the project. And the grant management staff in my home department started pressuring me to resolve the deficit, despite my repeated reminders that deficit was not of my own doing.    

But then. And then. Unfortunately however.  Pick your next transition into more disappointment.

Rather than letting the project go and hoping the debt would just vaporize in the thick layers of bureaucracy, I contacted the head of the sponsored projects office at my university.  Luckily, she was a woman and I thought that she would surely understand what had transpired.  I thought that even if she couldn't offer the sympathy I desperately needed at that point, she would understand the sexual harassment that had transpired and work with me to resolve the resulting financial issues.

I made an appointment with her and found myself sitting in her spacious and pleasant office on a sunny spring day.  I was optimistic that I could put this nightmare behind me.  She started the meeting by telling me that the company was not honoring its contract with the university nor paying its bills.  I told her the hotel room story and about the previous time this guy had hit on me.  She remained focused on the money.  I told her about the "stolen" prototype. She remained focused on the money. I told her about the previous time this guy had hit on me and I felt I had to just deal with it in order to keep the peace. She remained focused on the money.

To say that I felt unheard and invisible to her would be an understatement. As my appointment came to a close, she ushered me out of her office with a reminder of the importance of money.  She said "Let's just do what needs to be done to get these invoices paid and the university's money back."  I left feeling that the money meant far more than my well being and also that the expectation was that I would re-engage with this guy in order to persuade him to pay the outstanding invoices from the university that totaled into the thousands of dollars.  I felt sick at the thought of it.  

So I did not re-engage.   I thought about it, but I couldn't bring myself to do it.  In the end, the guy never paid the invoices. I ended up taking the hit on the negative balance on the project as my support staff took the money out of a few other of my accounts that were still showing a positive balance.  

And, I never worked with a company again.  I never met with the sponsored projects office again.  I never forgot the experience.  All of which was likely bad for my career, but I couldn't bring myself to try again. 

If I'd just grown a thicker skin....

Have you had a similar experience to this blog (The Importance of Money?) or would you like to share a story, concern, or experience that relates to what you have just read?  Click here to share (all responses are private and kept confidential).

 

Left Out of Study Abroad

 A Story from Engineering Education

“SERVICE TRIP! Help design and construct clean water access in rural Angola.” 

I was so excited when the email popped up in my Inbox. Here it was -- an opportunity to apply my engineering skills to something close to my heart....

This was my junior year of college and I was well into my degree in civil engineering. I chose civil engineering so that I could fulfill my dream of work in overseas development - maybe with an NGO, the Peace Corps, or USAID. I chose the long hours, the constant studying, the problem solving --so I would be qualified and ready to go for this kind of opportunity. And here it was -- my first chance to pursue those dreams and to set myself up for similar positions after graduation. So, naturally, I jumped in...

A week later, I was sitting in the front row of a classroom, listening to two professors from my department describing the project that would require six weeks of the following summer. We would begin the program on campus with two weeks of intensive study: learning the hydrologic maps of the region, reviewing the current water supply technology in the villages we would visit, evaluating local resources for construction, making initial plans, and getting the bare basics about local language and culture. Then, we would travel together for a month, working on location to meet with residents and develop infrastructure improvement plans. If all went well, we would even get to put in some sweat equity, working alongside the residents to start bringing water access systems to life!

At the end of the presentation, I took notes of the application process the program in ridiculous detail. I didn't want to make any mistakes! I diligently gathered my application materials, including carefully writing and rewriting my essay about why I wanted to be a part of this internship. In some ways, this was easy -- I couldn’t think of a project that would be a closer match to my career (and life!) goals, and I had great grades and a record as a good team member. In other ways, this was hard -- getting into this program was so important to me that I kept second guessing myself and making edit after edit of my original essay. But, as the program deadline approached, I took a deep breath and pressed the submit button.

A month later, all my initial excitement about the Angola program washed over me again when I opened my email and spotted the subject line indicating the decision on my application. I opened the email, read, blinked, and reread it. But, "sorry we can't include you" was really there. All I could think was "Huh? What? No. Not possible. No way."

I couldn't believe it. What was going on? If I wasn't qualified to be a part of this team, then who was? I hadn't seen any inkling that my peers were more invested than I was in developing world opportunities for engineers. As in none. They talked more about six-figure jobs than heading out to countries with six-figure GDPs. There was just no way.

For several days I just stewed. But that wasn't getting me anywhere so I decided to go ask one of the faculty trip leaders about my application. I just had to know if there was any way to appeal the decision or expand the trip by one person. If only I could just plead my case in person. 

And, when I did, Professor Thompson actually greeted me enthusiastically:

“Emma, hi! Say, I just wanted to tell you how inspired I was by your essay on the trip application. You have such passion for developing villages.” 

This comment threw me completely off base. I was so stunned that I stopped dead in my verbal tracks All my carefully prepared speech was forgotten. Awkwardly, I said:

“Umm, thanks?” 

After what felt to me like a long, awkward pause, I gathered my wits:

“So, that's why I'm here, actually. I was hoping you could reconsider my application. Obviously you thought I would be a good fit for this project, so is there anything that could get you to reconsider including me?”

And then, a bad day got only worse. Prof. Thompson responded:

“Emma, this decision was in no way personal. The team leaders agreed that you were one of our top choices! However, when we considered the trip and travel arrangements, we were concerned. This trip will include some rough country - we will camp out together at times and there won’t be restrooms available. We also have some family homestays planned, with only one or two students per house. Even when we are in hotels, the budget requires 3 or 4 students to a room. There were only a few girls who applied and we just had a hard time deciding how many we would need to manage all the different accommodations throughout the entire trip. We just couldn’t think of a way to provide privacy and safety for young women, so we decided we couldn’t accept any of the female applicants. I am sure you understand how tricky this situation is. But don’t worry - your passion comes through clearly and I am confident that future employers will see that and find ways to involve you in these types of projects.”

Stupefied. Shocked. All I could say before my emotions got the better of me was:

“Oh, I see, well thanks for considering me.” 

Then, I turned and nearly ran for home. Even after a few hours, when the initial rush of emotions had worn off, I was still crushed. At a total loss. 

At some point in the chaos of all the things I was feeling about being so left out, the anger began. Who were these two men to decide for me what was an acceptable level of privacy and safety?  The travel route and village were safe enough for male students to travel but someone didn't think to ensure the safety of the other half of the species? I was good friends with several of the guys who had been selected for the project, and I knew it would be totally fine for me to share a tent or hotel room with them. These were good guys too. I knew they would protect me if any threat to my physical safety came up.  

The idea that I didn’t even get a say in what would be a workable plan left me fuming mad and feeling helpless all at the same time. I had experienced my share of paternalizing behavior but never to the extent that it kept me from getting the same opportunities as my male classmates. It wasn’t like I didn’t realize that civil engineering has way more men than women, but it had never really been a problem for me. I had frankly always thought of myself as “one of the guys.” 

For the very first time since I first considered engineering, I felt completely left behind. I wondered if I had made a big mistake in choosing engineering. Would my whole career be like this?

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