Title:Gender Differences in Graduate Bioentrepreneurship Education - A Case Study: University of San Francisco
Volume: 4
Issue: 2
Author(s): Moira Gunn *, Cary Lai and Paul Lorton
Affiliation:
- Business of Biotechnology Program, School of Management, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94117,United States
Keywords:
Bioentrepreneurship education, gender differences in bioentrepreneurship, STEM gender differences, STEM
bioentrepreneurship, biotechnology employment gender differences, USF.
Abstract: Graduate bioentrepreneurship education programs are sufficiently new that little has been
researched concerning gender differences. This paper is a case study of the Professional Science
Masters (PSM) in Biotechnology at the University of San Francisco, and an analysis of 95 students in
five cohorts during the period 2012-2016. Student gender differences are presented in a number of
ways, including undergraduate GPAs, GRE scores prior to application, cohort acceptance profiles,
dropout-transition-failure rates, prior work experience, and post-degree employment figures. Female
students were somewhat more successful than men in completing the degree program, and 100% of all
graduates were fully employed in the biotechnology industry post-degree, or accepted into full-time
PhD programs. Gender differences were also determined using the GLAS project, the Gunn-Lorton
Attitudinal Surveys, which measures confidence levels in a variety of STEM tasks. The major finding of
this paper is that males were more comfortable than females to a statistically significant degree with
Transitional Technology, i.e., smartphones and computer applications, and the Internet. No gender
differences were detected in attitudes regarding science and mathematics, while both genders registered
low comfort with high mathematics and tasks with no science, technology or mathematics. Future
research includes comparisons of PSM students will all graduate students in the GLAS database,
including non-bioentrepreneurship students. Further studies are required to determine the need for
Transitional Technology skills, both in bioentrepreneurship graduate work and in subsequent
employment in the biotechnology industry.
