The Impact of Cultural Norms on Women*

KAREN L. TONSO
School of Education
University of Colorado - Boulder

ABSTRACT
Women student engineers and professors classroom experiences,
especially their everyday interactions with men student engineers
and professors, can be negative. This ethnographic study of the
discourse used by professors and students during a sophomore design class demonstrates that some womens difficulties are the result of cultural features of engineering that are only rarely open to
redefinition by women. In spite of many engineering educators
sincere commitments to improving womens experiences in engineering education, these cultural features diminish the successes of
reform-minded engineering education. I detail how discourse in
whole-class and teamwork settings indicated the cultural norms of
engineering talk and how this discourse reinforced traditional
practices that were only rarely open to revision. Also, I comment
on the use of ordeals in this classroom. My findings suggest that
engineering education must change before inclusion of women is
realized. In particular, I suggest the changes needed are complex
and include 1) more communication about the ways that cultural
norms impact women and other marginalized groups, 2) forums
where participants can speak openly without fear of retaliation,
and 3) attention to changing those policies and practices that send
narrow messages about who engineers are and what engineering
might be.

I. INTRODUCTION
Engineering education is described as a socially constructed
profession,1 where the male student engineers engage in the
process of masculinizing the subject area, and therefore marginalizing women students.2 However, the ways that a masculine discipline is created or maintained in the everyday, face-to-face interactions and activities of undergraduate engineering education are not
well understood. To investigate these issues, I studied an engineering design course that provided students with explicit collaborative
teamwork experiences centered around solving a real-world engineering problem for a government or industry client. Even though
this engineering class is called nontraditional because it used collaborative teams and real-world tasks, it is a required course. Thus,
the research site is a hybrid, incorporating real-world, open-ended
problems within engineering classrooms.
Because of engineerings history as a profession peopled almost
exclusively by men, one could expect that there would be features of
July 1996

the discourse used in the class that privileged men engineering students and faculty. I investigated what these features might be, both
their construction and maintenance. In addition, I suspected that
women students and faculty would respond to their exclusion or
disadvantage, so I studied how women engineering students, and to
a lesser degree women faculty, disrupted or resisted these features.
Earlier work3 showed how the customary strategy of assigning at
least one woman to each team resulted in isolating women students
from each other and significantly disadvantaged lone women student engineers. In contrast, teams where women students worked
in at least pairs allowed for substantially different kinds of discussions, learning, and ways of completing coursework assignments.
These differences contributed to better teamwork experiences for
women student engineers. However, this one strategyensuring
that women students worked on teams in at least pairswill not
correct other, deep-seated features of engineering education culture. This paper illuminates some of the cultural norms of engineering education and describes how they worked to the disadvantage of women students and faculty.
This research grew out of a larger project designed to look at
learning from a cultural perspective. Margaret Eisenhart4 organized
a collaborative research effort involving several sites, funded in part
by the Spencer Foundation. My site5 was one of four studies designed to investigate the construction of scientific knowledge outside school. Eisenhart joined theoretical discussions that focused on
learning processes that occur in groups outside school6 or, in the
case of the sophomore engineering classroom research, settings that
bring everyday, practical work into classrooms. Her goal for these
four studies centered on distinguish(ing) the desirable and undesirable features of outside-school learning and us(ing) that knowledge to inform thinking about schools.6 All four studies used a
qualitative method, informed by Lave and Wengers situated learning theory.7 ** Eisenharts vision (particularly her suggestion of this
field site and the linking of research method with theory) motivated
my enactment of the engineering classroom research.
A. Constructing Engineering Culture
In the engineering classroom studied, my research focused on
the different ways that men and women students understood the
setting, as well as the extent to which one set of these understandings might be privileged. I suspected that this systematic privileging
would not originate in the men (or women) students or in the engineering professors themselves, but would be a manifestation of
* I presented and published in the conference proceedings a much shorter, preliminary version of this paper at the 1995 Annual Meeting of the American Society
for Engineering Education, June 25-28, 1995, Anaheim, CA, Discourse in an Engineering Classroom: Whose Talk Counts?
** See Tonso (reference 3) for a summary of situated learning theory and the use
of qualitative research in engineering education.

Journal of Engineering Education 217

their on-going socialization and its enactment in engineering culture. Engineering education, as one facet of engineering culture, is
not simply training in a prescribed set of appropriate, academic
courses, but is enculturation into a well-established system of practices, meanings, and beliefs. These engineering traditions or customs have persisted over time and are passed down from mature
practitioners to novices. In college, engineering students engage in
activities through which engineering traditions are propagated.
Thus, as engineering students progress through their undergraduate engineering education, among the things they learn is what it
means to be an engineer.
Enculturation, or socialization, processes are not simple cookiecutter replications of customary practices. Rather, enculturation is
considerably more complex and proceeds by adoption of some
facets and adaptation of others. Researchers who study enculturation processes must account for the selves that novices bring to
the process and for expected variability in the culture and its mature
practitioners. That is, engineering students are not blank slates
when they arrive at college. As young adults, these students (among
other things) have well developed gendered identities and hold beliefs about the relative value of different academic disciplines
mathematical and physical sciences being more revered than social
sciences and humanities. Students use their beliefs and prior experiences to navigate among conflicting interpretations of their world;
this provides opportunities for learning that differ from one student
to another. In addition, there is considerable latitude for variation
in what the engineering culture is. Not only are mature practitioners inexact instantiations of the culture, but cultures are systems
of meaning persistently in flux to respond to changes in the world.
It is this potential for change that holds promise for improving engineering education in ways that make it more inclusive of women
and other historically under-represented groups.
As a researcher interested in shifting engineering culture toward
something that is more inclusive of women, I recognize a need for
settings that allow for the disruption of traditional practices or customs that are biased. Lave8 described contexts, such as the design
class where I did my research, as having malleable and obdurate features, a characterization that I find particularly useful for my work. If
engineering is to improve for women, identifying the malleable features and exploiting opportunities to change them is one way that
improvement might occur. In addition, revealing how obdurate features lead to gender bias could ultimately influence needed changes.
B. Clues About Engineering Culture
In their study of the reasons students leave science, math, and
engineering (SME) majors, Seymour and Hewitt9 document a
weeding out system that encourages undergraduate science,
math, and engineering students to transfer out of these disciplines
and into others. Seymour and Hewitt systematically disprove SME
facultys misperceptions of students reasons for leaving SME disciplines. These misperceptions included on the one hand, wrong
choices, under-preparation, lack of interest or ability, incompetence, incapacity for hard work, or, on the other, by the discovery of
a passion for some other discipline.10 In fact, their data show that
those students who leave SME majors (those called switchers) are
indistinguishable from those who stay (non-switchers). Seymour
and Hewitt report that a far greater contribution to SME attrition
is made by problems which arise from the structures of the educational experience and the culture of the disciplines (as objectified in
218

Journal of Engineering Education

the attitudes and practices of SME faculty) than by problems of

personal inadequacy, aptitude for other disciplines, or the appeal of
other majors.10 In particular, Seymour and Hewitt implicate longestablished SME traditions that weed out those deemed unfit for
the disciplines, via overwhelming curriculum pace and load, and
fierce competition for grades...and facultys withholding of help and
affirmation.11 Though women switchers and non-switchers
have similar credentials and reactions to SME, the weed-out system disproportionately impacts women students, resulting in their
feelings of personal rejection, discouragement, and reduced selfconfidence. However, all SME students, regardless of sex, race or
ethnicity, academic preparation, and whether students switch to
non-SME majors or not, find the weed-out system problematic.
ONeal12 appears to speak of the weed-out system when he discusses the use of ordeals in engineering education. In his conjecture,
he posits that ordeals are remnants of engineerings early roots in
military training and that ordeals prepared men for the hardships of
warfare, echoing observations of Sally and Barton Hacker.13 In addition, he asserted that ordeals in military training derive from
male initiation rites of ancient societies, stating that through initiation rites older men introduce young males to the adult way of
knowing.14 Though presented with a desire to change engineering
in ways that make it better for women students, his argument is incomplete. First, ONeals focus on perceptions about womens responses to ordeals overlooks information about mens responses to
ordeals (particularly the findings of Seymour and Hewitt) and fails
to consider other factors that influence student engineers negative
experiences. Second, his attention to rites of ancient societies neglects modern socialization practices that function to create masculine identities designed to exclude women. Finally, by emphasizing
the military, he understates, and possibly obscures, the extent to
which (Western white) mens perspectives overwhelm our society
and are not limited solely to those institutions affiliated with, or derived from, the military. I agree that ordeals are counterproductive
in engineering education (as Seymour and Hewitt indicate and as
will be suggested by some of my results), but this problem extends
beyond the focus of ONeals discussion. Prototypical male systems
of meaning, and the extent to which these meanings are erroneously assumed to be synonymous with, or representative of, the experiences of all humans, pervade our society and influence both womens experiences in engineering and the ways that women are
perceived by their engineering colleagues.
Deep-seated beliefs about womens appropriate roles in society
and about the value of womens work routinely constrain womens
access to and participation in nontraditional venues.* When
women began to enter these careers in larger numbers during the
late 60s and early 70s, their increased numbers were expected to
make these careers better for women. Yoder15 contradicted this belief in her review of womens experiences in nontraditional occupations and educational paths leading to these careers. She found that
when women engaged in careers that were historically male or participated in educational paths leading to these careers, men perceived womens participation as threatening, especially when womens numbers began to approach a critical mass. This threat
encompassed not only possible shifts in who had the power to make
substantive decisions about historically male endeavors, but also the
* Here, I include not only classrooms and work places, but also professional societies, publication opportunities, policy-setting boards, and the like.

July 1996

potential that historically male work might become womens

work and therefore be tainted for men. In this climate of change,
many of the women entering these careers and educational paths
experienced backlash from their male colleagues.
How then might cultural change be possible in engineering
without subjecting women practitioners to mistreatment? Since
backlash against women in historically male careers, and educational
paths leading to those careers, is well documented,1, 9, 15-18 it would be
naive to assume that women could make suggestions which would
be blithely adopted. More often, potential for change is blunted by
claims about the way things have always been, a conservative
stance that reinforces a rigid understanding of traditional practices
and makes customs part of an inviolate canon. I argue that this response endangers engineering itself because of engineerings deepseated commitment to innovation. If engineering becomes dogmatic and hegemonic, rather than flexible and responsive, then it loses
much of its power; something that few engineers could genuinely
desire. Because engineering educational settings are among the sites
where engineering culture changesin fact, one of the sites where
change is openly and sincerely advocated by many practitioners,
studying how change in engineering classrooms occurs or is prevented provides clues about engineerings future.
In these research results, I report how different contexts in the
engineering classroom created different opportunities for women
to participate in redefining engineering culture. Unfortunately, my
research results show that these kinds of shifts in established practices were rare, even under the best circumstances.

II. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

In 1993, I undertook a study of a second-semester, sophomore,
engineering design class on a state-supported engineering campus.*
My original intent was to explore how scientific knowledge developed and flowed among student engineers engaged in the everyday
work of completing an open-ended, real-world engineering project,
and how that work, especially the face-to-face interactions of teamwork, had different consequences for men and women student engineers and faculty. I attended the twice-weekly, two-hour meetings
of the design class and observed two teams of students and the faculty team. Just before mid-term, I interviewed two students and, near
the end of the semester, I interviewed all 10 students and the three
professors. The field notes (from over 25 class meetings and teamwork sessions and supplemented from time-to-time with audio
tapes of meetings) and interview transcripts provide the qualitative
data from which the results were drawn. Through a survey of all students in the class, I found these students similar to McIlwee and
Robinsons characterization of U. S. engineering students.18
Because the use of qualitative data is rare in engineering education research, I draw attention to the fact that what separates qualitative data from mere anecdotes is the systematic way data are gathered and analyzed. In contrast, anecdotal information, which also
comes from real-life experiences, lacks the rigor of qualitative research.** I analyzed the qualitative data using an ethnographic
* See Tonso (reference 3) for a more detailed description of the class, campus,
and participants.
** See Tonso (reference 3) for a more thorough discussin of the qualitative
methods employed.

July 1996

method of semantic domain analysis19,20a method widely recognized and employed by anthropologists. In addition, I include
quotes of participants, which are unusual in engineering education
research, but meet standards for inclusion of diverse viewpoints in
qualitative research. Repeated, careful readings of the data
strengthened the findings and served to rule out competing conclusions or theories.
During the semester, I observed the teams in three different settings:
in the classroom with three professors and the entire class of
approximately 45 students present,
in meetings the team had with their clients, and
in meetings the team had with the faculty.
Both Teams A and B worked on implementations of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Team A began with three men and
three women (Amy,* Chuck, Doug, Franci, Jennifer, and Paul),
though Paul (a senior student completing graduation requirements
and taking the course out of sequence) dropped the course early in
the semester. Team B had four men (Eduardo, Fred, Jeff, and
Louis) and one woman (Robin). The course was taught by three
adjunct professorsProfessor Mason, a male retired engineer, and
Drs. Jarrett and Smythe, female professors of Liberal Arts.

III. RESEARCH RESULTS

Three facets of the class provide the focus:
features of the classroom discourse that represent culturally
appropriate speech in engineering and that set the tone of
the course,
other discourse used to influence the classroom situation, either to revise customary practices or to reinforce them, and
the use of ordeals in this classroom.
As will become apparent in the subsequent data, Professor Mason,
the male engineering professor, played a pivotal role in the emergent tenor of this classroom. I caution against generalizing this particular male engineering professors comments and actions to all
engineering professors. However, whether he is representative of
engineering professors is beside the point. I selected his classroom
because he came recommended as someone who understood the
design process and created authentic engineering work opportunities for students. By including the contributions of Professor
Mason to this classroom, I document what happened and how he,
as a participant, influenced the setting.
A. Discourse in Whole-Class Settings
Young, college-age men are known for their boorish behavior,
as evidenced in the engineering classroom in mildly profane language and in the male students attention to semi-sexual, double
entendres. In addition, metaphors used by the male engineering
professor represented images from military and hunter/warrior traditions, usually male endeavors.
1. Profanity in the Classroom: The profanity used in the classroom was mild, but persistent. For instance, words like damn,
hell, shit, bull-shit, ass, and the like liberally sprinkled the
discourse, occurring over ten times per two-hour class. In this set* All names used in reference to the field site are pseudonyms. For the professors, I include the courtesy title used most often in the classroom.

Journal of Engineering Education 219

ting, I could not care less became who gives a rats ass, and I
will have to invent meeting minutes since I didnt take notes became Ill pull some shit out of my ass.21 In all of the instances of
mild profanity attributable to individuals and recorded in the field
notes, only one came from a woman student and the rest came from
men students and faculty. When men students used this language
in class, no one seemed to notice or to find it objectionable. There
were no comments made about it and I saw no nonverbal reactions
to it.
2. Semi-sexual, Double-entendre Humor: Likewise, male students, but not female, participated in a humor centered around
semi-sexual, double entendres. For example, during one of her lectures, Dr. Jarrett encountered considerable difficulty when she attempted to focus an overhead slide image on the screen at the front
of the room. Not only was the screen swaying in the breeze from
the open windows, but the projector was too far away from the
screenan attempt to make the too-small print as large as possible
for the huge lecture hall. Only moments before, Professor Mason
had lectured about creating legible overhead slides and test-driving the slides before presentations. This made Dr. Jarretts fumbling all the more embarrassing. She told the students she was setting a poor example and advised them to play with your graphics
before meetings.22 This was followed by chuckling and eye-rolling
of several male students, one of whom asked in a stage whisper Is
that what you play with? Up to that point, most students lounged
in their school desks and paid only minimal attention to the professors lectures. But as the men chuckled and made these remarks, the
women near me fidgeted in their seats, then sat up straight and
tight-lipped, their eyes looking directly ahead as they actively ignored the men. The use of the words team mates and team
members caused the same kind of classroom twittering among
the male students. In addition, during the entire semester, one of
the male students displayed a golf-course flag that read Please repair all ball marks. The men students found these references humorous. The women did not join these nudge-and-chuckle activities, but bristled at them. Again, no one mentioned these
comments. The lack of negative reactions to this humor from the
faculty, especially the male engineering professor, implied that
these behaviors were part of the accepted practices of engineering
classrooms, practices that bothered women students in ways that
profanity did not.
3. Violent Metaphors: Other clues to the accepted practices in
this engineering classroom came from the male professors
metaphors of symbolic violence used to illustrate his lectures. I include three examples to illustrate this point. The faculty team, following department guidelines, advocated a leader-and-agenda
model for team meetings. Professor Mason suggested that student
teams rotate the leadership tasks among the teams members. In
fact, he proposed that the leader for the week be the student responsible for the required weekly meeting minutes. In his words,
the minute taker is the whip.23 At other times, he spoke of his intent to slam-dunk a student24 and, at Team As final presentation,
he remarked about how he had to beat the hell out of them about
50 times during the semester.25 I interpreted his comments to
imply that using force on, or coercion of, other people, even ones
team mates, was an accepted practice for faculty/student interactions and collaborative engineering work.
On other occasions, Professor Mason spoke about how the student team should organize their work to share the tasks effectively.
220

Journal of Engineering Education

Throughout the semester, he called this collaborative model divide-and-conquer (For example, see ref. 26). In elaborating this
model, he suggested students eat the bear one bite at a time as it
comes out of the woods and that each student take a different
bite.27 A few students rolled their eyes at this description, but did
not react otherwise. I found eating the bear a curious image, representing the destruction and consumption of the clients project,
rather than construction of a solution to the problem.
This sense of destructive power continued in Professor Masons
advice about how student teams could begin gathering data about
the clients project. At the chalkboard,28 he drew a large circle and
labeled the interior the problem. Tapping the board repeatedly
with his chalk, he told the students to make five or six blind thrusts
of the bayonet into the problem. Though he did not say so explicitly, I imagined the central features of the problem impaled on bayonet pointslike heads on pikes, a particularly disturbing image for
me. These examples were not isolated incidents, but representative
of the tone set by Professor Mason throughout the semester. Neither the student engineers (women or men), nor the women faculty
mentioned these remarks. I saw no nonverbal reactions except for
the eye-rolling on January 13 when Professor Mason used the
bear metaphor.
In the whole-class setting, mild profanity, semi-sexual humor,
and Professor Masons metaphors represented how to talk like an
engineer. Throughout the semester, women students neither challenged these engineering norms, nor spoke in private to me about
them. However, women students nonverbal responses to the mens
humor seemed to indicate that women students found the humor
problematic. I wondered if this is consistent with Holland and
Eisenharts research on the ways that college students learn gender from their peers during extra-curricular peer-group interactions. In the culture of romance, even though men and women
paired up according to an equivalent level of attractiveness, and
though women and men exchanged tangibles and intangibles of
equal value, their relations turned out to be unequal. They were unequal because womens attractivenessand in some sense, social
worthwas a function of their appeal to men, whereas mens attractiveness and social worth were reckoned according to their appeal to women and their success in sports, music, business, and
other fields.29
Thus, mens developing social worth allows physical attractiveness to coexist with professional skills and other talents, but perceptions about womens social worth does not allow women to be considered simultaneously physically attractive and professional. The
semi-sexual, double entendres used by the men student engineers
may have threatened womens being considered engineers in ways
that profanity and violent metaphors did not. Nonetheless, for
these women to be accepted in engineering, to fit in and not stand
out as different, they must appear to accept these norms and not
openly resist or challenge them.
B. Discourse in Teamwork Settings
I observed the discourse of the three teams - Team A (3 women,
2 men students), Team B (1 woman, 4 men students), and the faculty team (2 women, 1 man). Two of these teams (Team B and the
faculty) tended to function systematically to entrench engineering
practices and the third (Team A) allowed for only minor redefinition of customs. In this section, I discuss each of these three teamwork settings. The descriptions of the student teams add particular
July 1996

weight to my recommendation that women student engineers work

in at least pairs on teams. In addition, I suspect that the difficulties
encountered by the women faculty in this class begin the discussion
of other women facultys negative experiences working with some
of their male colleagues. I begin with Team B, then discuss the faculty team, and end with Team A.
1. Team With a Lone Woman: Team B was the only student
team in this class formed with a lone woman member. Early in the
semester, when the faculty organized the teams in this class, they
planned to assign women in pairs. Dr. Smythe advocated this because she had heard from women students (while teaching another
class in this four-semester program) about their dislike for being the
only woman on a team. However, the faculty failed to gather information on the sex of each student and erroneously assigned Robin,
a woman with a gender-neutral name, to a team with four men.
Her isolation from her male colleagues was further increased since
pairs of the four men were already close friendsEduardo and
Louis, Jeff and Fred. Three of the four men (Louis, Jeff, and Fred)
were relatively quiet, but Eduardo was loquacious. These circumstances contributed to Eduardos practice of running the team and
reinforcing a do as little as possible and nothing the professors tell
us disdain for engineering course work.
One example of the consequences of Eduardos contributions to
the team dialogue comes from a typical class and team meeting on
February 15. During the previous class, the professors told the students to arrive on February 15 prepared to share executive summaries (from the required draft of the area reports due at the end of
the week) with their team mates. Robin was the only member of
Team B who acknowledged having the required executive summary. Since the professors were circulating among the student teams (a
rare occurrence), it became clear that they were checking on the
team meetings to ensure that executive summaries were shared. In
Team Bs meeting, students began with a brief discussion about
their successes and failures to find technical information for their
area reports, then Robin asked about the executive summaries. This
is the transcript of their dialogue:30
Robin: Do you want to share executive summaries, you two (Eduardo and Louis)?
Eduardo: Do you want to kiss my ass? Show us yours.
Robin: (She reads hers lickety-split without enunciating the
words. None of her team mates can quite hear her or understand
her text, nor can I in the general hubbub of eight team meetings.
Eduardo makes mumbling comments and talks very fast to mimic
her, indicating his inability to understand her. She does not slow
down or let them read it themselves. She seems to be going through
the motions of trying to do what Professor Mason asked of them.)
Eduardo: Slow down. (She doesnt.)
Robin: Table of contents
Eduardo: We didnt hear the executive summary yet.
Robin: At least I had something to say.
This exchange was typical of the way Eduardo treated Robin.
Other members of Team B did not get involved in these exchanges
between Robin and Eduardo. Robins response that at least she
had something to say challenged Eduardo, something no other
student did. Though she was certainly no shrinking violet,
Robins interactions in the team were low-key and non-confrontational during the semester.
During his interview, Eduardo characterized Robin as a poor
public speaker:31
July 1996

Eduardo: ...We all got very good grades (on oral presentations). I
think the lowest grade was actually Robin, but she always does that
on oral presentations.* She speaks at 300 miles an hour and she
mumbles. I think thats a big thing. Nobody ever takes her seriously. Were trying to help her now, or maybe just make fun of her.
Shed come up to us (he garbles his speech, talking very fast and
mumbling). This is what she sounds like when she speaks. She
speaks so fast.
Karen: She must get really nervous or something.
Eduardo: No, she, when she has conversations, this is how she
talks. She mumbles and she goes 300 miles an hour. She says something to Louis and me and Louis is like Eduardo, did you understand a word she says? And Im more blunt about it, Robin, we
didnt understand a word you said. (To which she replies,) Oh,
leave me alone.
Eduardo admitted to making fun of Robins mumbled fast delivery and believed that this was her usual delivery style. By the end
of the semester, Robin too was convinced that she talked too fast,
even though I observed her using this only one time (2-15, above)
and never at oral presentations (where I have audio tapes of her
speech as confirmation). In her words, It seems like something
that at home will last five minutes takes up 30 seconds for me to say
(at oral presentations).32 Eduardo constructed Robin as a student
with poor oral presentation skills and made his inaccurate characterization stick.
2. Faculty Team: The second arena where engineering norms
were reinforced was during faculty discussions about sharing the
teaching tasks. The department guidelines advocated that faculty
collaboration would serve as a model for student teams. This faculty
team did not fulfill this ideal, but functioned via Professor Mason
making most of the decisions and controlling the teaching of the
class. As adjunct faculty teaching part-time, the three professors
needed a time to meet that was close to their scheduled team-teaching slot. Early in the semester, Drs. Smythe and Jarrett believed
that Professor Mason would meet with them in the hall 10 minutes
before class to discuss that days teaching plan. However, he did not
arrive early enough to have a conversation, though he did dictate
tasks as they walked into the classroom. Even if they had spent a
few minutes together before class, it was too close to the time when
the teaching must be done to allow for genuine negotiations of duties. Waiting to the last minute to make teaching decisions precluded any preparation for the class and disadvantaged Drs. Smythe and
Jarrettin their first or second semester teaching in this program,
compared to Professor Masonin his fifth year.
As the semester progressed, the professors began to meet at the
front of the room (during the last half of the class while the student
teams met) to discuss teaching the upcoming class(es). These meetings soon became a forum where Professor Mason reified his prior
teaching practices and reduced the influence of Drs. Smythe and
Jarrett. On January 13, one such meeting took place:
Dr. Jarrett is asking questions which deal with teaching this
classHave we got the contract (that the students must complete
with their client)?, Do they (the students) mail the client letter
with the contract?, Do we get the feedback reports? Professor
Mason answers her questions by telling her how this was handled in
the past and occasionally Dr. Smythe interjects remarks, sometimes
* For the record, both Eduardo and Robin received Bs for this course; their
team mates As.

Journal of Engineering Education 221

agreeing with him and sometimes presenting her differing experiences when she taught with another professor in the previous
semester. For instance, Dr. Smythe and her previous teaching partner met to grade student writing together, rather than the way Professor Mason suggested which was to rotate the grading among the
professors with only one professor reading each set. Dr. Jarrett restates Professor Masons responses and asks if anyone has thought
of developing a set of guidelines for evaluating the students work so
there was consistency among the various professors. Professor
Mason restates that the contract, client letter, and feedback reports
were read by only one professor in (his) previous classes. Dr. Jarrett
continues to ask Professor Mason questions. Professor Mason restates his answers more tersely. He looks away from the faculty
meeting and scans the student teams. He catches my eye and steps
toward my desk about eight feet away, while the other two professors put their heads together in a discussion I cannot hear. Professor
Mason speaks to me in a sing-song, sarcastic fashion, though in a
stage whisper: Theyre school-marming it to death. His tone indicates his disdain for their comments.33
Through his control of these meetings, Professor Mason controlled the classroom culture and virtually eliminated any shifts
away from his vision of good teaching.
It was common for Drs. Smythe and Jarrett to defer to Professor
Masons judgment. For instance, at the Team B meeting of February 15 (above, where Eduardo coerced Robin to read her executive summary), Professor Mason made just one of many on-the-fly
decisions about coursework. Let us rejoin the Team B dialogue
where we left off earlier:34
Robin: At least I had something to say.
Jeff: Should we have a meeting next week?
Robin: Thursday?
Eduardo: Not this week.
Robin: We need to meet before next week. Could you make it
from 10 to 12 Friday at the library? He (Professor Mason) said...
Eduardo: (Clearing his throat) Professor Masons right there,
Louis is getting weak. (Louis sits where he can see Professor Mason
approaching behind Robin and is worried that the professor will
overhear them talking about him.)
Dr. Smythe: (Walks up and says:) The executive summary
should be one page, not any longer.
Dr. Jarrett: (Joins Dr. Smythe standing near Team B and looks
at Robins paper.) Youve titled the introductionIntroduction.
(To Dr. Smythe:) Is that okay or should it give the gist of where
youre headedlike a headline? (They both look toward Professor
Mason and he responds.)
Professor Mason: Instead of the word introduction, use a title
like The Swift Creek Problem.
Dr. Jarrett said that she deferred to him because he taught the
course before and she was a newcomer35 and called his style one of
pronouncement, not negotiation.36 Dr. Smythe was somewhat
more critical, calling the way he led the teaching of the class a
staged takeover where he sets the agenda and likes to remain in
control.37 Their deference appeared to be the path of least resistance, taken after their attempts at more genuine negotiation of the
teaching tasks failed.
Louis was the only student who commented on Professor Masons takeover of the class. Comparing Dr. Smythes and Dr. Jarretts feedback on his written and oral work to Professor Masons
feedback, Louis said he thought Dr. Smythe and Dr. Jarrett try to
222

Journal of Engineering Education

(provide feedback about the reports and oral presentations that they
think is appropriate), but its hard to do that when Professor Masons got his mind set. It just appears that those two (Dr. Smythe
and Dr. Jarrett) and Professor Mason just are going in opposite
ways. They have to agree with Professor Mason because hes the
head (professor).38 To Louis it seemed logical that Professor
Mason was the head professor.
3. Team With Three Women: The third arena where I observed discourse used to modify the team situation, was in Team A
meetings (three women and two men). Here, a few opportunities to
redefine the taken-for-granted practices of engineering classrooms
existed, though they were constrained by the organization of the
class. That is, most of the teams tasks were not open to negotiation,
but were set by the department as represented in the schedule for
written and oral presentations. However, students controlled how
to gather data at the Team A site and how to represent themselves
to the client. I present one of these examples because it, unlike the
other cases, shows how one woman students suggestion changed
engineering practices to make them more inclusive of her concerns.
This example deals with Team As redefinition of professional
dress. During class, Professor Mason told students to wear professional dress to all client meetings and oral presentations, but his
advice referred only to mens dress clothingslacks, jacket, and
tie.39 The students found this entirely too vague and spent considerable team time negotiating the womens professional dress for all
occasions and the mens professional dress for working site visits.
When one of the male students suggested that they look nice, but
not a suit and tie, one of the female students compelled the inclusion of womens clothing when she said or a jacket and skirt.40 For
all indoor presentations and on-site tours (requiring only strolling
through town and talking to their client or to business owners), the
students wore their best clothing. For the men, this meant a suit,
tie, and dress shoes and, for the women, either a skirt-and-jacket or
a dress, and nylons with low-to-medium heels. However, for onsite work trips, especially when the students surveyed historic
buildings to determine compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, the students wore more casual clothing, such as jeans
and t-shirts.
In addition, wearing professional dress had different consequences for women than for men and this influenced the teams decisions about performing their site visits. Of the five students on
this team, only Franci attended another class immediately before
her (design) class. If the team departed for their site visit at 10 AM,
Franci must wear a dress to her other class. Franci found this troublesome, because everybody hassles you when you wear a dress to
class.39 She was adamant about this, saying I hate for them to notice that I am wearing a dress. Doug disagreed with her, saying its
not a big deal. Everybody knows youre in (this design class) or have
an interview.39 Clearly, men student engineers in professional dress
exhibited their belonging to the engineering culture, but women
student engineers wearing professional dress did not. Nonetheless,
to accommodate her concerns, the team adjusted the timing of
their site visits so that Franci could change into a dress after her
class.
The Team A students modified engineering practices related to
professional dress to make them more inclusive of women and
more appropriate for work visits. This was possible because Team
A controlled some decisions about their project. The presence of
three women on Team A was critical to the inclusion of womens
July 1996

concerns. By contrast, Team B never discussed professional dress

beyond reminding each other to wear it and it is unlikely that Robin
could compel these kinds of discussions based on her treatment by
her team. Agogino and Linn41 reported similar experiences for
women working alone on teams with men student engineers. No
mistreatment of Team As three women by their male colleagues
occurred. Thus, on Team A, a forum existed where womens concerns could be voiced, but Team As three women had few concerns
of this sort working with their male colleagues. In marked contrast,
Team Bs lone woman received systematic mistreatment, but no
forum existed where these concerns could be voiced. It is important
to notice how the (professor-organized) team assignments, and not
merely the individuals involved, contributed to the creation of these
very different contexts. Dr. Smythes decision to assign women student engineers to teams in at least pairs significantly improved
Team As women student engineers experiences. Unfortunately,
the faculty teams inability to accurately identify women students
based on their given names resulted in the creation of a team where
Robin did not have the same opportunities as her female colleagues
on Team A.
In contrast to the student teams, the faculty team exhibited an
even more extreme case of womens subordination. Professor Masons controlling behavior and his status in this program overwhelmed and demeaned the contributions of Drs. Smythe and Jarrett. Thus, women working with men on teams changed
engineering practices, but only in very limited ways. I suspect that
this would be even less likely to occur in a traditional engineering
classroom where teaching was predominantly didactic and the significant interactions were one-on-one between professors (who in
engineering are usually men) and students or where teamwork assignments were temporary or of short-term duration. For this reason, classroom settings like this one, where students control some
of their work and where women are not isolated from each other,
offer potential for localized change in alienating customs.
C. Ordeals Used During This Class
Based on Seymour and Hewitts9 analysis of the impact of the
weed-out system on engineering students and on ONeals12 remarks about ordeals used in engineering classrooms, I analyzed my
data to develop a preliminary understanding of these sorts of features in engineering education. At this time, I can only look at the
evidence of ordeals in this classroom, where there are clues, especially in Professor Masons comments about his role and the
courses purposes, that something like ordeals constitute a part of
the learning process for engineers.
For instance, at the first oral presentation, each of the student
teams met with a faculty member in a role-playing exercise modeled after a technical staff meeting that would be typical of industry.
Here, the professor assumed the role of engineering supervisor (or
engineering manager) as each student, playing the role of a staff engineer working on a project team, summarized his or her progress
to date for management. In his role as supervisor at Team As presentation, Professor Mason asked each student a pointed question
about his or her area of expertise and students became noticeably
uncomfortable attempting to answer him.42 At a meeting two days
later where Professor Mason provided feedback on each students
performance, he explained his role to the students and justified
putting them on the spot, telling them I gave you a mild challenge.43 I never observed Drs. Smythe or Jarrett behaving in this
July 1996

way, nor did their comments follow this pattern. In fact, at Team
Bs first oral presentation (where Drs. Smythe and Jarrett played the
role of the engineering manager), there were no questions asked of
the students during each presentation.
In addition, throughout the semester, required work in the
course (which was mandated by the department-prepared schedule
and in department-prepared faculty guidelines) created hurdles
graded reports and oral presentationsthrough which the successful engineering student progressed. Professor Mason spoke about
this aspect of the class during his interview. Metaphorically, he referred to this practice by saying that the mark on the wall is a very
high mark and students dont have any trouble jumping to it.44 Furthermore, he believed youve got to build show-and-tell crisis
points, where it all of a sudden becomes clear that the individual
cant hide in the woodwork....My job is to put on stress, but then
judge stress relief, you never want to put them over the edge, over
the breaking edge. There are some who have a very low breaking
edge and they drop out until they mature more.45 I was struck then,
as I am now in the retelling, by the notion that engineering students
require coercion to perform engineering tasks. Is this really necessary? These students, like most engineering students in the U. S.,
are the cream of the crop, exhibiting considerable motivation to
perform at extraordinarily high levels throughout their academic
careers. Add to this the fact that Professor Masons beliefs grant
him the authority to determine the level of stress appropriate to
each student. If that level of stress is too high and results in pushing
a student over the breaking edge, then, in Professor Masons
mind, the student is at fault for his or her perceived deficiencies.
Professor Masons rationalization for the potential mistreatment of
students concerned me, especially in a climate where he wielded
considerable power and there was little evidence of checks and balances on him.
In marked contrast, the professors of liberal arts did not see the
coursework requirements as ordeals. Dr. Jarrett spoke of helping
students have confidence...and develop their judgment.46 Dr.
Smythe told about helping students apply their skills.47 Further
evidence of the philosophical divide between the professors came
from interviews with the liberal arts professors. Dr. Smythe
thought that Professor Masons approach to mediating conflicts
among team members was too detached, characterizing his response to one team who asked for his intervention as if he were saying Its your problem, deal with it.48 Professor Mason explained
his response as requiring them (students) to assume responsibility.49 His sense that students go-it-alone without faculty support
dovetailed with his belief that the most important thing (for students to learn during their time in college) is internalizationby
which he seemed to mean self-motivation and independence.50
With Professor Masons strong reins on the teaching, his systematic abandonment of the students, rather than support of them,
became the classroom standard. Dr. Smythe noted that he set up
(the faculty/student relationships in the classroom) so there was no
interaction, which reduced the contact with students that the professors of liberal arts valued.51 In a veiled reference to Dr. Jarretts
interest in acting in a supportive way, Professor Mason was critical
of professors who insert themselves into a group and become the
director,52 because he viewed that as reducing students opportunities to take charge. This seems a very contradictory message. On
the one hand, students must take charge; yet on the other hand,
professors must force them to do so. Professor Mason acted as if the
Journal of Engineering Education 223

student teams actually had control over their projects, while the realities of the classroom organization indicated that important decisions were mandated by the course syllabus, which he guaranteed
was followed to the letter.
Most of the students found Professor Mason difficult to deal
with. Franci and Chuck found Professor Masons presence at team
meetings, client meetings, and other oral presentations stressful.53,54
For Robin, this stress came from Professor Masons feedback:
Professor Mason cuts you down too much....He (focuses) on every
single thing that was wrong....I think he wants to put you on the
spot.55 Louis, also, found Professor Masons style abrasive, because
the way (Professor Mason) comes across was just too extreme,
which Louis countered by just block(ing) him out.56 Jennifer
thought that learning to work with people like Professor Mason,
people who are difficult, was part of what she learned in the class
that she would use in her engineering career.57
The use of ordeals in this classroom was consistent with Professor Masons beliefs about engineering education, but foreign to
Drs. Smythe and Jarrettboth trained in liberal arts. Though the
students were aware of the discomfort Professor Masons style created, they accepted it as part of what one does in engineering.

IV. SUMMARY
In this engineering classroom, men engineering students and
facultys talk set the tone of the design class. Men used mild profanity, humor based on semi-sexual, double entendres, and metaphors
encouraging symbolic violence, but women did not. In student and
faculty teamwork discussions, more often than not discourse reinforced established practices, to the detriment of women faculty and
at least one student (Robin). Only in Team A, with three women
and two men, did rare redefinition of engineering customs occur.
The lack of student control over their classroom tasks limited these
opportunities for change. Finally, the use of ordeals existed in this
classroom. Though ONeal (1994) suggests ordeals alienate women
engineering students, Seymour and Hewitt (1994) show that ordeals alienate students from all demographic categories and are
problematic for those who switch to non-SME majors and for
those who stay in SME majors. The ordeals in this classroom were
used only by the engineering professor which lends credibility to
ONeals assertions about their acceptance in engineering culture,
but not in the liberal arts. Taken together as a system, discourse in
this classroom defined the tone of the classroom, reinforced engineering traditions, and, on a much more limited scale, redefined
customs. Overwhelmingly, this classroom met these mens expectations of the world. Womens viewpoints could be interjected only
under certain conditions which rarely existed, even in a nontraditional classroom.
These results suggest that the impact of engineering culture on
students and faculty, particularly women, is complex and will require
far-reaching changes if engineering education is to improve in ways
that make it better for historically under-represented groups. In particular, this research documents a system where making comments
about experiences outside the norms of engineering culture is nearly
impossible. For the women in my research to be accepted in todays
engineering culture, to fit in and not stand out as different, they
must appear to accept existing norms and not openly resist or challenge them. This suggests a need for expanding the dialogue to bet224

Journal of Engineering Education

ter encompass the considerable variety of experiences present. First,

engineering education sites, at the least, should provide opportunities for all members of the community to discuss the varieties of ways
that traditional practices differentially impact participants. Rather
than arguing that one person or anothers take on a given situation
is wrong or misleading, or ignoring the possibility of differences, all
members of the community should learn to respect diverse viewpoints and to see themselves and their profession through the eyes of
those who have historically been under-represented or marginalized.
Second, these forums where conversation is made possible should be
safe for all participants. As a non-engineering colleague astutely observed about the ways women were at risk on this campus and in this
classroom, you cant even wear a dress, for crying out loud. As illustrated in my results, women students and faculty trying to effect
changes were at times demeaned by their men colleaguesRobin as
a poor public speaker and Drs. Smythe and Jarrett as schoolmarms. If genuine communication is to occur, these risks must be
removed. Third, engineering education policies and practices cannot
protect faculty who clearly promote counter-productive classroom
learning environments. The example of Professor Mason brings to
life the concerns Seymour and Hewitt voiced. Though he does not
represent all engineering faculty, he is by no means unique and his
students, through interactions with him, came to understand his actions as part of being an engineer. This sends narrow messages about
who engineers are and what engineering might be and undercuts the
efforts of men and women engineering faculty who work tirelessly to
improve the profession.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I gratefully acknowledge contributions to this research from the
students, faculty, and department responsible for the design courses
who generously shared themselves and their work with me; Dr.
Margaret Eisenhart (professor of educational anthropology at University of Colorado-Boulder) who suggested this research site, provided fieldwork supervision, maintained an on-going dialogue about
the meanings of events I observed, encouraged me to prepare this
manuscript, and provided feedback on an earlier draft; and two
anonymous reviewers whose comments sharpened my arguments.
In addition, I recognize women engineering faculty and graduate
students whose stories corroborated the unacceptable circumstances
of the women in my research site. Any errors remaining are mine.

REFERENCES
1. Carter, R., & Kirkup, G., Women in Engineering: A Good Place to Be?
London: Macmillan Education, Ltd., 1990, p. 1.
2. Ref. 1, p. 67.
3. Tonso, K. L., Student Learning and Gender, Journal of Engineering Education, vol. 85, April 1996, pp. 143-150.
4. Eisenhart, M., The Construction of Scientific Knowledge Outside
School, Final report to the Spencer Foundation. Boulder, CO, 1993.
5. Tonso, K. L., Becoming Engineers While Working Collaboratively: Knowledge and Gender in a Non-Traditional Engineering Course,
Part of Margaret Eisenharts Final Report to the Spencer Foundation entitled The Construction of Scientific Knowledge Outside School, 1993.
6. Ref. 4. p. 1

July 1996

7. Lave, J., & Wenger, E., Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991.
8. Lave, J., Cognition in Practice: Mind, Mathematics, and Culture in
Everyday Life, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
9. Seymour, E. & Hewitt, N. M., Talking About Leaving: Factors
Contributing to High Attrition Rates, Final Report to the Alfred P. Sloan
Foundation, Boulder, CO: Author, 1994.
10. Ref. 9, p. 520.
11. Ref. 9, p. 184.
12. ONeal, J. B., Jr., Engineering Education As an Ordeal and Its Relationship to Women in Engineering, Proceedings of the 1994 Annual
Meeting of the American Society for Engineering Education, June 26-29, 1994,
Edmonton, Alberta, pp. 1008-1009, 1100-1101.
13. Hacker, S., Pleasure, Power, and Technology: Some Tales of Gender,
Engineering, and the Cooperative Workplace. Winchester, MA: Unwin
Hyman, Inc., 1989.
14. Ref. 12, p. 1009.
15. Yoder, J. D., Rethinking Tokenism: Looking Beyond Numbers,
Gender and Society, 5(2), 1991, pp. 178-192.
16. Hall, R. M., with assistance from B. R. Sandler, The Classroom Climate: A Chilly One for Women? Washington, DC: Association of American
Colleges, Project on the Status and Education of Women, 1982.
17. Hall, R. M., & Sandler, B. R., Outside the Classroom: A Chilly Campus Climate for Women? Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges, Project on the Status and Education of Women, 1984.
18. McIlwee, J. S., & Robinson, J. G., Women in Engineering: Gender,
Power, and Workplace Culture, Albany: State University of New York Press,
1992.
19. Spradley, J. P., The Ethnographic Interview, New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1979.
20. Spradley, J. P., Participant Observation, Orlando, FL: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1980.
21. Field notes, 3-15-93, p. 8.
22. Field notes, 2-8-93, p. 1.
23. Field notes, 1-11-93, p. 2.
24. Field notes, 3-15-93, p. 3.
25. Field notes, 4-29-93, p. 9.
26. Field notes, 1-25-93, p. 4.
27. Field notes, 1-13-93, p. 2.
28. Field notes, 1-25-93, p. 2.
29. Holland, D. & Eisenhart, M., Educated in Romance: Women,
Achievement, and College Culture, Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1990, pp. 211-212, (emphasis in the original).
30. Field notes, 2-15-93, p. 4.
31. Interview with Eduardo, 4-16-93, p. 16.
32. Interview with Robin, 4-15-93, p. 12.
33. Field notes, 1-13-93, p. 3-4.
34. Field notes, 2-15-93, p. 4-5.
35. Interview with Dr. Jarrett, 4-26-93, p. 8.
36. Interview with Dr. Jarrett, 4-26-93, p. 9.
37. Interview with Dr. Smythe, 4-26-93, p. 2, 11.
38. Interview with Louis, 4-16-93, p. 9.
39. Typical class vignette.
40. Field notes, 1-20-93, p. 4.
41. Agogino, A. M., & Linn, M., Retaining Female Engineering Students: Will Design Experiences Help? NSF Directions, 5(2), 1992.
42. Field notes, 2-1-93.
43. Field notes, 2-3-93, p. 2.
44. Interview with Professor Mason, 4-21-93, p. 7.

July 1996

45. Interview with Professor Mason, 4-21-93, p. 9-10, (emphasis based

on his inflection).
46. Interview with Dr. Jarrett, 4-26-93, p. 3.
47. Interview with Dr. Smythe, 4-26-93, p. 6.
48. Interview with Dr. Smythe, 4-26-93, p. 3.
49. Interview with Professor Mason, 4-21-93, p. 3.
50. Interview with Professor Mason, 4-21-93, p. 5.
51. Interview with Dr. Smythe, 4-26-93, p. 12.
52. Interview with Professor Mason, 4-21-93, p. 7.
53. Interview with Franci, 4-15-93, p. 5.
54. Interview with Chuck, 2-25-93, p. 8.
55. Interview with Robin, 4-15-93, pp. 12-13.
56. Interview with Louis, 4-16-93, p. 8.
57. Interview with Jennifer, 4-22-93, p. 10.

Journal of Engineering Education 225