OPTIONS: An Approach to the Recruitment
and Retention of Female Students in Technical Areas

The faculty and staff at Danville Community College
realized that after almost 30 years of supposed equal
access to educational programs, most women enrolling at
the college were entering the traditional female career
areas: nursing, childcare, education, and secretarial.
Attempts to encourage women to enter trade or technical
curriculums had met with very little success. Recruit-
ment of female students was very difficult, and those
who did enroll in the programs often dropped out
without completing significant amounts of the curricu-
lum.

The college examined a variety of factors that were
thought to have an impact on the recruitment and
retention of female students—the academic skills of
females in the technical areas; instructors’ attitudes
toward female students; male students’ attitudes about
females in the curriculum; and employers’ reactions to
females in technical jobs. We found that the academic
skills of entering females were good; male instructors
welcomed female students into the technical curricula;
male students exhibited little resistance to female stu-
dents in technical curricula; and many employers indi-
cated they like to employ qualified female technicians.

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So what was going wrong? From discussions with
female technical students, we learned that they were
moderately satisfied; however, they repeatedly made
comments such as “I’m lonely being the only female in
most of my classes,” “Id like to have another woman to
talk to sometimes,” “I'd like a chance to talk about my
kids instead of sports!” or “The guys are nice, but when I
try to talk to them about how they feel about things like
career decisions, they don’t want to talk.” It appeared
that the female students missed the forms and topics of
communication that were more common among women.

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A plan was formulated to recruit a large group of
female students, keep them together as a group while
working on their technical and math skills, expose them
to successful women working in technical fields, and
encourage the communication and bonding that ap-
peared to be missing for the isolated female student in a
technical curriculum. Danville Community College

received a gender-equity grant to assist recruitment
activities. The program was called OPTIONS to reinforce
the broad spectrum of career choices available to women.
The key component of the recruitment effort was to give
female technical students a “warm up semester” by
placing them in all-female classes. During the first
semester, the students took such courses as Blueprint
Reading, Industrial Mathematics, Technical Writing,
Introduction to Trade and Industrial Careers, Tools and
Terminology, and Human Relations; all of these classes
are required in the majority of technical curricula at the
college. The students were encouraged to talk about their
families and their feelings about entering a nontraditional
field, luncheons were held, the “buddy system” was
encouraged, and verbal reinforcement was used fre-
quently.

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During the next academic year, these students will
enter regular classes including both female and male
students. It will take several years to determine if this
approach to recruitment and retention of female students
in technical areas is significantly effective. However, the
technical areas of the college had a one-year increase
(approximately 114%) in enrollment of female students.
Student surveys of the program indicated a high level of
satisfaction, and instructors were enthusiastic and
optimistic about the success of the participants.

Boyd Motley, Division Chair, Engineering & Industrial
Technologies

Janet Tate, Coordinator, OPTIONS Program

For further information, contact the authors at Danville
Community College, 1008 S. Main, Danville, VA 24541.

 

Suanne D. Roueche, Editor

October 23, 1992, Vol. XIV, No. 25

©The University of Texas at Austin, 1992
Further duplication is permitted by MEMBER
Insttutons for their own personnel.

INNOVATION ABSTRACTS is a publication of the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development (NISOD),
Department of Educational Adminis traton, College of Education, EDB 348, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas
78712, (512) 471-7545. Funding in part by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and the Sid W. Richardson Foundation. Issued weekly
when classes are in session during fall and spring terms. ISSN 0199-106X.

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