I heard the engineering programs at slo lack females in labs/classrooms and may experience some sexism, how true is this? Also, how many females are there in a usual upper division class.
Can you share the source and provide more details on the nature of the sexism? My older daughter graduated last year and my younger one is a freshman, both in engineering, both very happy and never mentioned any sexism. The ratio of male to female students might be skewed, but that has to do entirely with the applicant pool, and the school’s algorithm based admissions system, not with any bias.
You might have different situations at schools that have more latitude in how they select applicants, I know my younger daughter received incredibly generous merit aid at schools such as WPI that wanted to have a more balance gender ratio.
I concur completely with @iulianc. My son who has quite a few female friends, including his girlfriend, who are either in engineering or recent grads has never made mention of sexism. He is keenly aware of social justice issues particularly gender and race based. I think I would have heard something if it was even remotely prevalent.
CP does have a vibrant SWE chapter.
I have two sons at SLO in engineering. They have several female friends in their respective majors and none of them have reported any sexism. In fact I think the College of Engineering is acutely aware of the relative scarcity of female engineers and is doing everything it can to increase their numbers.
You may hear some grumbling from male engineering students about female students being favored for internships by many of the major companies.
My daughter went to another STEM school where the males outnumber the females, about a 75/25 split, and in the school as a whole there are more females in the psychology dept. D did notice some of the male students were a little pushy and she had to fight to have her views presented. It was particularly disappointing that she rarely had another female in a group project and that’s where she felt some of the males tried to push her around. She’s in civil, there are more males in the discipline, but that’s how it is in the would too.
The faculty didn’t seem to have a problem with female students. D and her friend, also female, worked for their main professor their last semester and were very happy working together.
I know this is about SLO and I don’t have any info on their program but I do think prospective engineers need to ask what the school does to help women and minorities in engineering.
At my D’s school they had a rule for group work that women were never the “only” in a group. So if 4 people worked as a group it might be half women or it might be 3 women and 1 man but never the other way around. It meant many of the groups were all male! Ditto internationals. I don’t think anyone felt left out by this process and it made a huge difference to the women engineers not to have to fight in order to have a voice in group projects. I thought that was a brilliant system but I am sure there are other creative approaches to the issue. Do ask - it’s an important issue; if a school just says “that’s not a problem here” - it’s a problem.
" if a school just says “that’s not a problem here” - it’s a problem."
That’s a vague, broad a presumptive statement without evidence offered to back it up.