Minority report: The deal with major segregation
Most people choose their careers, but Richard Fehring didn’t.
“I was in the first lottery group for the Vietnam war,” said Fehring, recalling the days when he knew he would be on the front lines. But Fehring never made it to the battlefield. In fact, he never made it out of the hospital.
It was in the yearlong waiting period between being drafted and being shipped out that Fehring heard his calling. What he heard was a nighttime radio advertisement calling for student nurses. As a biology major at Marquette, Fehring already had some of the background required to be a nurse.
“The ad was talking about the student nurse corps program,” Fehring said. “Essentially, it paid for your training and then gave you a job in the army after.”
Even at that point, Fehring admits that he didn’t think a man like himself would go into nursing. That was until he saw Donald Billie, a male nurse featured in the glossy pages of Marquette’s Alumni News. “That’s when I thought, ‘there’s a male in nursing. Maybe I can do that,’ ” Fehring said.
Today, Fehring is a professor in the College of Nursing and is the only male faculty member. As for the male representation in the nursing classrooms, it’s mostly the same, with 24 males up against the College’s 359 females this year.
Nursing, however, is not the only college that is seeking more of a balance. On college campuses, gender segregation in majors is a frequent trend.
According to the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment, the College of Education is only 23 percent male, while the College of Engineering has a staggering 79 percent male. The challenge Marquette’s colleges are faced with is often a matter of finding a healthy balance.
Balance is exactly what the College of Engineering is trying to achieve. Opposite to the College of Nursing, engineering’s females often seem to be lost in the crowd. However, engineering dean Stan Jaskolski said the school has been making progress and has seen “a dramatic change that has been a necessity for a long time.”
In fact, the College of Engineering has made it clear just how important its women are by establishing a recruiting process most college basketball teams would admire.
“We are targeting all women’s high schools,” Jaskolski said. “We do seminars, teach one-day classes, and do whatever we can to expose these women to engineering. Once they experience it, they see that this is not for men alone.”
The success of engineering’s recruiting process has been undeniable. In 2007, the college offered a one-semester course at Divine Savior Holy Angels, an all-girls Catholic school in Milwaukee. Of the 17 women enrolled in the class, all 17 applied to the College of Engineering. Jaskolski said all were accepted, and all but one received scholarships.
“This never would have happened if we didn’t take aggressive steps to expose these women (to engineering),” Jaskolski said, “and I am glad we did.”
Jaskolski believes that a lot of the men-only engineering misconceptions are derived from conventions developed over the years.
“If you look at history, it has always been the men who have done the hands-on work like engineering,” Jaskolski said. “Today, that is simply not the case.”
Kirsten Lehman, a sophomore in the College of Engineering, started her undergraduate career in the College of Communication, where females are in the majority according to Institutional Research and Assessment, outnumbering males 574 to 347. She said the gender separation within the College of Engineering was intimidating at first. Social stereotypes are what usually force students into certain majors, she said, and the results are gender-segregated fields of study.
“(Fewer) men will be nurses because some see it as a very feminine career. Being a nurse is much like being a mother, in the American sense of the word ‘mother,’” Lehman said.
She also acknowledged difficulties that come along with a segregated classroom.
“Your voice is underrepresented,” Lehman said. “It can be intimidating to be in the minority because saying the wrong thing might give those like you a bad name. You can get to feeling like you are carrying the reputation of your entire group on your back when you do things.”
Jake Thayer, a sophomore in the College of Nursing, echoed the same issues with being “one in a few.”
“I have been looked down upon by some peers for being in the program. In the classroom, it is sometimes hard to relate to my classmates, being that the majority of them are female,” Thayer said.
Kathleen Cepelka, associate dean in the female-dominated College of Education (77 percent female), warned that gender segregation at the college level spells bad news for the future.
“We need to have more diversity in the role modeling we provide to the people we teach, and therefore more males would be advantageous to our profession,” Cepelka said about the College of Education.
Cepelka said the College is always looking for more men to enroll but has no strategic recruiting process.
“Society and parents may encourage you in a certain direction and they may send you signals, but ultimately it is up to the student how they perceive those signals,” said Cheryl Maranto, dean of the College of Business Administration. “Students must remember it is ultimately their own choice.”
No matter what the influence is, Cepelka’s recommendation to all her education students when picking a major is plain and simple.
“Regardless of gender, be passionate, and the barriers will be overcome.”
Tags: classroom, engineering, integration, major choices, nursing, segregation, student segregation
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