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According to data from ASEE, women were awarded 23.1% of doctoral degrees and held 15.7% of tenured/tenuretrack faculty faculty positions in 2015 versus 21.3% and 12.7% in 2009, respectively [1, 2]. While promising, the leaky pipeline remains a persistent problem in the recruitment of underrepresented people into tenure track positions. To help overcome this barrier, engineering graduate students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign created the Illinois Female Engineers in Academia Training (iFEAT) program to improve the competitiveness of underrepresented applicants in the tenure-track faculty recruitment process. The program is two-fold. First, seminars and panel discussions lead by faculty representing different engineering disciplines cover a variety of topics related to the job search process. Secondly, peer review sessions over the course of several months allow students to develop their own application materials. Since its founding in 2014, the program has been evaluated by considering four elements: content, format, pace, and climate. The evaluations in the first two years were based on conducting pre-, mid-, and post-surveys as well as voluntary one-on-one exit interviews. For the programs third year, we made significant changes based past participant feedback. Specific topics were expanded to increase understanding and improve familiarity with the application process. The evaluation structure was revised to increase the amount of immediate feedback. In this paper, we discuss how the program has evolved over the three years as well as how our methods for program monitoring have been revised. By incorporating these changes, we hope to continue to prepare high quality female faculty candidates, thereby diminishing the gender gap in engineering academia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although women make up a significant portion of the college educated population, there remains a sizable gap between the number of men and women pursuing degrees and careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. The gender gap begins at middle school and widens considerably in later high school years. One major factor for this gap is the lack of belonging women can feel towards engineering. As one approach to developing and improving this sense of belonging, we focused on improving students' comprehension of engineering topics during a weeklong materials science and engineering summer camp for high school girls. We took a two-prong approach: a unifying paradigm and a design project. The purpose of this was to allow for transfer of learning throughout the week, allowing the students to build and showcase their own comprehension. The paradigm, the materials science tetrahedron, provided cohesion throughout an otherwise broad and seemingly disconnected field, while the design project allowed for students to implement what they learned during the week in a group setting. This approach concomitantly enhances confidence and their sense of belonging within engineering. In this paper we highlight lessons learned from incorporating this approach into our program, including our perception of its effectiveness and feedback from the girls. The preliminary results show that our summer camp is a unique and well-suited opportunity to study how comprehension can engender a sense of belonging amongst female students with the ultimate goal of closing the gender gap in engineering fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]