Preaching to the Choir: The Responsibility to Share WIE Research with Female Students

Research conducted over the last few decades by engineering educators and social scientists has culminated into a rich and diverse cache of knowledge about the issues facing women in engineering. While this knowledge is shared extensively among university and industry personnel, it is not systematically disseminated to the population that such information most directly affects: the women engineering students themselves. This paper introduces the concept of "preaching" - the sharing of women in engineering research knowledge with women engineering students - and asks if it is our right and responsibility to preach. While there exist a few compelling reasons to keep research findings behind closed doors, this paper argues that there are a multitude of communication, edification, and coping benefits to preaching. This paper also discusses the utilization of various research findings for the purpose of preaching. As a theoretical introduction of preaching, the discussion presented here is the first step in developing a fresh set of tools for the retention of women in engineering