Peer-mentoring among female biomedical engineering students can be extended to other engineering disciplines

Abstract

Mentoring is significant personal and professional assistance given by a more experienced person to a less experienced person during a time of transition. Transitions from high school to university, from university to graduate school are difficult. Organizing and administering mentoring programs in schools or in professional societies provide good recruitment and retention of female students in engineering. Biomedical engineering (BME) is the engineering discipline that has the highest percentage of female degree recipients and tenure/tenure-track teaching faculty as seen presented in "ASEE Profiles of Engineering and Engineering Technology Colleges, 2001 Education. Engineering Education by the Numbers". Thus there is a great potential for female role models, mentors and mentees in BME. Recently, I have a developed a mentoring program for women at the Joint Graduate Biomedical Engineering Program of University of Memphis (UM) and University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UT). Currently our program focuses on peer-mentoring and community building. We follow the book "Giving Much/Gaining More: Mentoring for Success" by Dr. Wadsworth for our meetings and activities to provide a support and discussion group, and environment to women in their transition time of the BME graduate studies. Our future goal is to expand our mentoring program to female students in our engineering school since we believe that the women in BME are excellent role models, mentors and mentees to women in other engineering disciplines.