Single gender programs: do they make a difference?

Over the last two decades much work has been done to address the needs of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) areas and to develop interventions that encourage girls to pursue careers in these areas. A popular solution seems to be "single-gender" education but whether or not the positive results of these programs can be attributed to the single-gender environment is questionable. The Center for Pre-college Programs at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJlT) has offered a "girls-only" Women in Engineering and Technology program (FEMME) since 1981. To test the hypothesis that the positive results of FEMME may be due to good educational methodologies, rather than due to the single-gender environment, NJIT developed the pre-engineering program (PrEP). The PrEP and one of the FEMME programs are identical in every way, except for the inclusion of male students in PrEP. This paper summarizes the current research on single-gender education in STEM and the results of our study.