Gender Matters: Assessing and Addressing the Persistent Gender Gap in Introductory Physics Courses at the University of Michigan

Students arrive in class with differing backgrounds. Studying the classroom performance of students with a knowledge of these backgrounds allows us to better understand how a student is transformed by a course of instruction. While we expect that some background factors, such as prior test scores and academic preparation, should influence student success, we are concerned about inappropriate impact that results from uncontrollable factors, such as gender, socio-economic status, and race. In particular, a gender disparity in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields is nationally recognized and especially prominent in physics. With enrollment and success in introductory college physics courses a crucial factor in this female underrepresentation, our goal is to investigate the gender gap in introductory physics courses at the University of Michigan. We report analysis of data for 48,579 students who have taken introductory physics courses at UM between Fall 1996 and Winter 2010. We clearly detect the presence and persistence of a gendered performance gap in all of these courses in all terms considered. We find that differing mathematical preparation accounts for some of this gender gap, especially in the female dominated life science sequence. The physical science and engineering sequence, which is substantially male dominated, shows a strong gender difference even after differing mathematical preparation is accounted for. Finally, we investigate supplementary study groups as one means of intervention, finding that they do not significantly influence student success. From these conclusions and relevant literature, we provide recommendations of intervention techniques aimed at increasing student success and reducing the gender gap at the University of Michigan.