At Fairleigh Dickinson University, they found that women and nonbinary students in computer science (CS) dropped significantly from 33% freshman year to only 9% senior year. Factors that kept minorities, especially women, out of computer science were stereotypes, low initial grades, and low confidence. Female students are often not attracted to programs that don’t have a clear “real world” application. Part of the intro course redesigns at Fairleigh Dickinson was to include real world problems into the courses. They added a focus on real world applications to the second semester year 1 CS intro course to show students value in the career path that they may not be aware of. Fairleigh Dickinson also implemented frequent low stakes assignments and added interdisciplinary topics. These changes resulted in a 57% increase in enrollment in 2 modified courses for first year students. (Sharma et. al., 2019) 

Presenting courses in context of what problems they are trying to solve make them more appealing for women. For example, “Building Socially Responsible Websites for Non-Profits” is more appealing than “Introduction to HTML/CSS.” One study found that having different “flavors” of computer science courses that allowed students to learn through different lenses of humanities, math, science, or music led to a dramatic increase of girls taking further computer science courses. Women are more interested in courses that emphasize the purpose and not the tool or language. (Kiang, 2018)

Harvey Mudd College (HMC) raised its percentage of women majoring in computer science from 12% to 40% over the course of 5 years. They implemented 3 actions focused on first year students. They revised the intro to comp sci course, they provided research opportunities for women immediately after their first year to build real world experience, and they gave first year students “opportunities to attend the annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference hosted by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology.” Harvey Mudd created two intro courses, one to address the needs of students with no prior experience and one geared towards those who already have it. Creating a course for true beginners keeps students with no experience from feeling like they are behind their peers in the class from day one. HMC Students who took the revised course compared to the original course averaged a 4% higher midterm grade in the Comp Sci 2 course, which is a Java heavy course. The better scores are significant because the revised course does not even teach Java and still these students earned better grades. 75% of students who took the new course said it changed their perspective of comp sci, compared to 47% of the old course. (Corbett, 2015)Description text goes here

All students at Harvey Mudd College (HMC) were required to take the same Java based intro course. During the course’s 10 year run, professors reported noticing that due to unequal amounts of prior knowledge, the course was too easy for some students and too difficult for others, and unfortunately did not change how students felt about comp sci after they finished the course. Harvey Mudd changed the course to “CS for Scientists and Engineers,” which emphasized the multitude of practical applications and used the language Python instead of Java which is more flexible and forgiving. They now emphasize that students aren’t being taught to program for the sake of programming, but instead that they are learning to problem solve using programming as the tool to do so. (Corbett, 2015)

At the University of Daytona (UD), they created a new intro course to computer science that was designed to boost interest in underrepresented groups. UD then redesigned additional courses intended to maintain the interest of these students during the second year as well. They switched from C++ to Java which is an easier and more beginner friendly language. (Speed et. al., 2019).Description text goes here

Lack of pre-college experience means that women are often unfamiliar with the field of music technology. University of Michigan’s Department of Performing Arts Technology (PAT) on average had classes where only about 20% of students were women, many who expressed that they had found the program accidentally. Once the department created a pre-college summer outreach program geared towards women, the year after its implementation the incoming freshman class for music technology was 40% female. This shows how important women being familiar with the field of music technology impacts their interest in the field (University of Michigan, 2023).

Comparatively, the most cited reason for men staying in STEM at Harvey Mudd College was pre-college experience (Corbett, 2015).

Higher Education has run on a “deficit model” based on the assumption that women and people of color arrive with educational deficits that must be addressed. Gateway courses often send students to other degrees, the “weed out” mentality rewards privilege as ability. One way to help address this is to create multiple pathways for STEM majors. If a student needs to take an introductory course to strengthen their math, if this course is a prerequisite for intro science courses it delays these students from taking science. The students who need to take these courses tend to be first generation college students. If the curriculum is rethought these courses could be taken as a co-requisite removing this obstacle. Students need to develop a “science identity” if they are going to feel like they belong in the field. The best way to bring women into STEM is through hands-on experiences. Introductory classes for coding that put students with some coding experience together with students who had none made those students feel like they didn’t belong. Creating separate sections can alleviate this issue and allow those students to discover their own abilities. (Johnson, 2023)

The department of Chemistry at York University implemented online Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) workshops to add to undergrad and graduate courses. These workshops were designed to help appreciate the value of inclusivity. One major goal was to help students develop professional skills. This focus lets students know how modern employers often value EDI skills, and that the undergrad department also values inclusivity as a core value. York added these workshops to a “Skills for Chemistry'' module that students are required to take as a foundational course. They department found that when talking about social issues, STEM majors found evidence-based discussions the most appealing. Adding these workshops to the beginning of the program helps convey the importance the university places in it. In the face to face workshop, 52% found it “very useful” and 41% “somewhat useful.” Something to overcome is the attitude that inclusivity being a part of the curriculum is for social science courses, as becoming more culturally aware does better prepare students for entering the workforce. (Jones et. al., 2022)

Stony Brook University started a Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) program in 1993. A strategy they implemented was structured peer mentoring. First year students met weekly in groups of 5-6 with junior or senior level mentors. The focus of the groups were to study, network, and discuss the shared challenges of women in STEM. The mentors are trained by WISE faculty to promote socialization, resilience, and long term academic and career planning. Both the mentees and mentors have reported positive effects of this program. Mentors gain leadership skills and often continue their relationships with mentees past the first year. Student participation in research was also an effective intervention method. The external support from the faculty researchers was important. The research helped women build their science identities, build their sense of autonomy (Kelly and Bugallo, 2020).

University of Daytona: Discovered that undeclared students had a much worse retention rate than declared students. After implementing a new “Discover arts” major they increased retention of these students who took the program from 79% to 86.7%. This program included expanding the role of student peer mentors and improvements to the advising process (Speed, Pair, et. al., 2019).

Peer role models are important as students who see another who they identify with makes it easier to visualize themself as successful (Kiang 2018)

Berklee Alumni Jasmine Kok M.M. co founded “She Knows Tech” when she realized that there were no female staff in Berklee’s Music Production, Technology, and Innovation (MPTI) program and very few female students. They started a mentorship program where they got 5 grad students to agree to mentor 4 undergrad students offering 7 sessions. 40 girls applied and they were able to accept 20. A year later almost half of the mentees were in tech related majors at Berklee (Gibson, 2020)

Male professors are more likely to use different language to describe female students in recommendation letters knowing about implicit bias can help stop that (Dobrian and Jones, 2017)

When professors know the unique challenges women face in STEM they can better offer advice to their mentees. Sometimes this advice may just come down to what language to use. Since women struggle to be taken seriously and are viewed as timid, a professor was able to advise his mentee that she should make a more assertive pitch for an engineering project to combat this. Her proposal was accepted (Sullivan 2013).

If they know why women leave STEM they can help combat it, women are 17% more likely to leave STEM oft due to low self efficacy, second and 4th semester is when this is most likely, those who did stay cited encouragement from people in their lives as being important (Analysis of retention 2023) 

When educated properly faculty can help change courses to be more inclusive- this has a very positive impact on self efficacy. Supportive and respectful relationships between students and faculty improve a sense of belonging. Staff should review policies in their department and make changes that reduce bias (Cohen-Miller et. al, 2022) 

At Brown University a woman saw that she was one of the very few women in a large engineering class. She asked the professor how he planned on making the class inclusive to women. The professor emailed the class a plan of action that was over 2000 words long on his plan to do this. An action like this helped her feel comfortable in the course (Bahl, 2022).

Systems often target students' personal biases to bring minorities into STEM instead of implementing changes to the curriculum. AAC&U helped promote self efficacy with a 3 year long training for faculty that encouraged them to accept three main points: that minorities cannot be blamed for their under representation, staff play a huge role in minority outcomes, and that they had to stay fully present in community no matter how uncomfortable they were discussing social justice issues of their students. This helped promote self efficacy to become more culturally accepting in the educators (Mack and Winter, 2019).

The University of Daytona had 3 messages: importance of change, the pivotal role faculty play in a student’s success, and the university’s commitment and investment in faculty improvement. They wanted to emphasize the difference between cultural competence and culturally responsive teaching. The former implies that it can be a one time fix and the latter accurately describes it as an ever improving process. UD faculty found that the unstructured nature of the program was important because it let them choose what inspired them (Speed et. al., 2019). 

At Bryn Mawr College they created a workshop for faculty assisted by two alumni to educate about barriers that underrepresented students face and how to better address them. Over the course of three years the workshop occurred 4 times. The workshop for professors introduced educators to the issues students faced and possible ways to help. It had 4 parts: a large group discussion of the goals of the workshop, a presentation about the researched ways to make teaching more inclusive, break out groups where they discussed case studies and practiced these new skills, and an invitation to make a commitment to take concrete actions with the knowledge from the workshop. The first and last parts are to help educators become self motivated to make their own individual goals. The first fact they taught educators is that the difference in college readiness is not the only cause of the gap of success between underrepresented groups and the majority. Participants in the workshops said the small groups were the most successful parts of the workshop. They recommended that in the future there should be more time to develop concrete plans on how to implement these strategies. (Matlin et. al., 2019)

Professors have a huge impact on women’s success and retention in stem. Students who have negative experiences with faculty have a lower GPA and are more likely to leave STEM. Creating cultural change will be more difficult if men do not accept that sexism is a real obstacle for women in stem. Often male allies support women in theory but don’t do anything concrete. Men fighting against sexism are viewed as more effective and serious than attempts led by women. The different ways these male allies are allies is through educating students and peers, they disengage sexist faculty and don't confront them, or focus only on the students they work with and do not focus on affecting their peer faculty. They would be more effective allies if they did confront their sexist colleges and focus more attention on making changes with their peer faculty (Lewis 2023).

Science identity is defined by how much people relate their scientific pursuits to their sense of self. Having a strong identity is related to positive school outcomes. Minority students can have their identities disrupted when people in positions of power focus on their background rather than viewing them as a scientist. Instrumental mentoring is task focused mentoring that provides the mentee with skills and resources, such as emerging techniques. Socioemotional mentoring provides the student with emotional support, such as giving them encouragement and pep talks. Negative mentoring is when a mentor harms the mentor relationship, examples include being too harsh and demanding of the student’s work or being unreliable. Instrumental Mentoring was the most effective at raising the levels of science identity (Robnet et. al., 2018).

Women make up 40% of brown faculty and 52% of the student body. But in STEM only 22.7% of the faculty are women. Part of their Diversity and Inclusion Action plan (DIAP) launched in 2016 is working to increase the amount of women in the faculty pipeline for life and physical sciences. In order to attract more women they need to pay attention of the needs of potential dual career families, like childcare and community building. The Deputy Dean of the Faculty and Associate Professor of Engineering Janet Blume is working to build “​​the Women in the Physical Sciences Network” which is intended to provide support to faculty, postdoctoral students, and grad and undergrad students. The university has also created a fellowship program to bring early career scholars and create a pathway for them to faculty ranks. It is called Presidential Diversity Postdoctoral Fellowships. (Brown University, 2024)

Harvey Mudd College provided the opportunity for students to go to The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Students reported feeling less isolated, and more committed to CS after attending the conference. At the conference women see that the culture of CS isn’t always the geeky hostile culture that is expected. 72% of students who went to the conference reported it made them more interested in taking another CS class and 62% said it made them more interested in majoring in CS. Women who went to the conference were 37% more likely to major in CS compared to 10% of women who did not attend (Corbett, 2015)

At Queen's University in Belfast 64.2% of students in the chemistry classes strongly agreed that gender balance in the role models studied in the course were important to them. 71% of students appreciated efforts to increase gender balance. 42% agreed and 35% strongly agreed that the inclusion of female examples impacted their perception of the topic (Morgan 2024). 

This study looked at the varying effects of 6 gender and mentorship combinations. The combinations were mentees only having a faculty mentor, gender matched or unmatched, and the mentee having both a faculty mentor and a postgraduate with genders matched and unmatched. Mentor gender does affect the kind of mentoring generally offered. When the gender of the mentor and mentee match the mentee is more likely to receive emotional and career related support. Matching gender was generally unrelated to the outcome of the mentorship but when the genders were unmatched reported more publications. Post graduate students can offer strong mentorship support to undergrad students because of their recent experience in undergrad.  When comparing the effects of gender matching faculty mentors and post grad mentors mentees with the highest scientist identity with gender matched faculty mentors. Gender matched faculty mentors without an additional post grad mentor reported the highest gains in knowledge and skills. The mentorship combo that had the worst results for the mentees was not having a gender match with either the faculty mentor or the post grad mentors. Women benefited more from shared gender than men. These results suggest that colleges should value recruiting more women faculty but be careful not to overload their female faculty (Morales, 2018).

Student participation in research was also an effective intervention method. The external support from the faculty researchers was important. The research helped women build their science identities, build their sense of autonomy (Kelly and Bugallo, 2020). 

One effort Harvey Mudd College implements to raise female retention and enrollment in computer science was to promote early research. Early research can give women confidence that they can be successful in the field of computer science after college. Harvey Mudd College offered summer research programs to students after their first year.  After doing the summer research program 66% of female participants chose to major in computer science, compared to the 22% of overall students. Evidence also shows this method is actually more effective on women than men, 67% of women saying it built their confidence compared to 25% of male students (Corbett, 2015). 

West Virginia University’s mentored research program was started in 2017 for first and second year students. The first year students who participated 92% returned for a second year. This program helps retain more than average amounts of minority students, low income, first year and black students. The research is for credit and also can provide pay through federal work study funds. A female music education  major said the program benefited her because she was looking for a job, it allowed her to make connections, and she was able to continue her research even after the program ended (WVA, 2024).

Undergraduate research, scholarship, and creativity activity (URSCA) is shown to increase retention, clarify a student’s major of choice, and increase their likelihood of going to graduate school (Morrison et. al., 2019).

To support faculty to take interest in mentoring undergraduate research the mentoring and involvement must be considered an addition to their workload and have the workload be adjusted. It should not just be considered part of the normal workload. The university should specifically state that they value staff supporting undergrad research when considering promotions and tenure. Funding should be provided to support faculty and staff involved in research. Staff should be able to revise courses to emphasize the importance of research. Faculty and students should be taught about the value of undergraduate research, such as skill development (Morrison et. al., 2019).