More Girls in Class = Higher GPA!
September 18, 2009
by Optixmom
|The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
My name is Jennifer Kruschwitz and I suffer from CCD. In this situation, CCD does not stand for charge-coupled devices; it stands for Compulsive Counting Disorder. I have been a self-diagnosed CCD sufferer since I changed my major in college from biology to 
optics. CCD drives me to count the number of women vs. the total number of students in any science or mathematics class that I am enrolled. It also causes me to count the number of women that I see at conferences and exhibitions, in engineering or science departments, or in scientific professional organizations. I calculate the percentage of women represented and work to track the data vs. other data points I may have collected in previous years. I also tend to get excited if the percentage calculated is over 15%. If the percentage exceeds this number, my disorder causes me to let out a cheer and necessitates me to give a bystander a high five. My friends and colleagues are painfully aware of my counting obsession. It used to be that they would pretend that I wasn’t doing it when I was a student, but now that I am an adjunct professor and a professional out in the real world my colleagues will try to make light of the situation and ask me, “how do the numbers look?”
Last spring semester I was teaching an optics course and was caught by one of my colleagues performing my loud cheer and high five victory dance because out of the students enrolled in my class 28% of them were women. This started a discussion regarding the percentages of women in the graduate program in my department. It seems that I have not been the only person afflicted with CCD; the faculty have been keeping track of the numbers of women for many years. My colleague informed me that the faculty had discovered a correlation between high percentages of women in a graduate class and the overall GPA of that class. When the percentages were high, the overall GPA of any given class in optics was also high. How could this be? What phenomenon was occurring that would drive the grades of all of the students up just because there were more women in the room?
It wasn’t due to a negative competition component because the atmosphere in our program does not pit one student against another. What I discovered was that for many of the courses the women’s questions to the professor or the teaching assistants provided clarity to the rest of the class regarding a lecture topic. It is not to say that men’s questions don’t provide clarity it just seems that the women’s questions were from a different perspective, and thus showed a second way of solving a problem. This can be extremely helpful for all of the students depending on what learning style each has and what teaching style the professor has. If a student has the same learning style as the professor, but they represent very few of the students in the class, their questions may not necessarily give the other students a better understanding. But if two students, of different learning styles ask questions, each from their own particular perspective, more of the students will benefit from the answers. There could also be other non-tangibles occurring that would cause this benefit, but I was happy to learn that they have seen a value to having more women in our program.
Now I just have to keep an eye out for the faculty on the admissions committee to see if I see the signs of CCD. I will look forward to more cheers and high fives coming from them in the future!
my counseling psychology course is primarily women, and more questions are asked there than in my two history classes. History seems to appeal to men and women equally.
This is extremely interesting, Jennifer. I have more girls than boys in my 4th grade class this year…hmmm…hopefully this will hold true at our level as well! High five to you for this posting.
Never any lines at the ladies’ room at a science and engineering conference. When I have to wait as long to use the facilities there as I do at the flower show, I’ll dance around and give out a few high fives.
This correlation was noticed within our PhD and Masters program, where the classwork is more focused and all of the students come into the program with equal ability. It is pretty exciting to think about how a class with equal ability that happens to have more women will actually outperform their peers from classes with a lower percentage of women.
I have also noticed that when girls are added to the membership roster of a scientific or engineering club for children ages 9-14 (ex. First Lego League; and I will talk about this in future blogs) that their presence is a calming force. When the kids are calm they are more likely to focus on the task at hand.
Only when women are there in numbers, above a certain critical mass. Take it frmo me, when there are very few women in a VERY male environment, it’s like throwing a bucket of meat into a shark tank.
Janis, you are completely right. That is why I get so excited at 15% or higher. I have been in many a classroom or professional meeting where I was the only woman in a room full of 50 to 100 men. It is an extremely uncomfortable feeling and very difficult to describe to my male colleagues. It is almost like you have to fight for oxygen. There is definitely power in numbers for women.
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