The article “Satisfaction” by Lisa Frehill in The ME magazine addresses the concern that the amount of engineers who are not retaining engineering jobs after they graduate is on the rise. In summary Frehill talks about the surveys that display retention of engineering jobs.
To start off, one thing that intrigued me about this article is the form of writing. Recently in class, we discussed the difference between science writing and scientific writing. Now, at first glance and by assumption, I anticipated this article to be more in the form of science writing. A simple form in which the author gives information on the topic without going very in depth and specific. However, as I divulged further into the article, I began to find graphs and charts. These were my first clues that this article was truly a scientific writing.
Frehill scientifically breaks down the surveys about retention from gender, to year graduated, and then even further into field of study. The most important break downs in my opinion are year graduated and gender. These are the most important because if you don’t break them down, they could be greatly misinterpreted. For example, the article says “The survey data show that there was not much difference in women’s and men’s retention in engineering when looking at new graduates. The gap widened, however, among groups that had graduated earlier.” The article further goes on to display the numbers. Without these numbers and explanation one could just say that more and more engineering graduates are not going into engineering jobs. When truthfully it is mostly those who have been in the field for quite a while who are moving away from engineering.
Another thing that Frehill did that I believed was important was the fact that she displayed the difference in overall numbers between women and men in engineering. See, at the beginning of the article she explains that women had been looked at as the greater falling retention because of the fact that there are so few women in engineering. When however, “These stories seemed to zero in on women’s leaving as problematic, without understanding the larger context of job turnover in engineering.” I think it was important for the article to correct the misconception of women being the only ones leaving the field.
Ultimately, the article was a great success in my opinion because it allowed me to focus on the information I was intrigued by. The author did this by addressing each of the fields I specifically. For example each graph separated its information between chemical, civil and architectural, electrical and electronics, and mechanical engineering. As a mechanical engineer I was mostly interested in that information, and with everything separated it allowed me to focus on what I wanted to know rather than getting bored with information I didn’t care about.
