Work in progress — Flexibility and career opportunity as motivation for women selecting industrial engineering majors

This work in progress explores qualitatively why women choose to major in industrial engineering and remain there. Through two focus groups with undergraduate women industrial engineering majors at an historically black university and a predominantly white institution, we found these primary themes. 1) Students chose their institution for its reputation. 2) Students chose to major in industrial engineering because they believed it a) was less technical and more like business, b) had a wide range of job opportunities and c) offered the chance to work more with people. 3) Students remained in their major because of the caring and passionate faculty in their departments. Future work will seek to confirm these findings at an additional institution and explore in more depth the similarities and differences among institutions.