Getting it right

Attracting women to engineering is tough, but some schools have found a formula that seems to work.

The female engineering professor could hardly believe her ears. During a recent departmental faculty meeting, the professor (who wishes to remain anonymous) was astounded to hear one of the higher-ups proudly explaining the university's newest initiative to attract more female engineering students: Planting flowers and shrubs outside to make the entrance more visually pleasing.

"Nobody moved. You could see everyone was thinking the same thing," says the professor. "I don't think that planting tulips in a pretty little row outside the engineering building is really going to translate into more women engineers."

On some level, you can't blame the guy for trying. It's no secret there is a paucity of women in the field of engineering. In fact, the recent report of the congressional Commission on the Advancement of Women and Minorities in Science, Engineering, and Technology Development starkly reminded engineering educators that growth has not only been dismal, but stagnant.

In 1985, women earned 15 percent of the bachelor's degrees in engineering. Information collected by ASEE indicates that just over 21 percent of bachelor's degrees awarded in engineering in 1999 went to women. There are far more women entering law, medicine, and business-- fields previously overwhelmingly dominated by men. No wonder the commission noted that the U.S. science, engineering, and technology workforce "is comprised mainly of white males, with small percentages of women and minority group members."

Yet there are plenty of women and minorities in the general workforce, they just don't have the skills to thrive in the new, technology-driven economy. Facing a shortage of such workers, warns business leaders, means the nation may not be able to remain competitive in the global marketplace. What's so alarming, say the report's authors, is that the U.S. "risks losing its economic and intellectual preeminence."

That's a heavy burden for those on the front line of higher education to bear. Some engineering schools have excelled in upping the ranks of women in their midst. But trying to pin down exactly how they achieve those enviable percentages is a science in itself. There's no magic formula and certainly no such thing as a silver bullet. In some cases, it just means being in the right place at the right time. In others, it takes an aggressive recruiting effort.

Engineering schools with high numbers of female students say the best, albeit the most obvious, way to attract female students is to increase the number of female faculty members. "We have quadrupled the number of female faculty in the past six to seven years," says Ioannis Miaoulis, dean of the Tufts University College of Engineering. "The message is out there that women succeed at Tufts," says Mialouis, who boasts a faculty that is 16 percent female and a school that is 33 percent female. At the undergraduate level, the percentages are even higher with women accounting for nearly 40 percent of the engineering graduates.

That goal is echoed by James Schaffer, director of engineering at Lafayette College, where 31 percent of the bachelor's degrees in engineering last year went to women. "We work very hard to recruit and retain quality female engineering faculty," says Schaffer. "They serve as wonderful mentors and role models for our women students." Janie Fouke, dean of the School of Engineering at Michigan State University, says she and her counterparts play a very important role. "It's very difficult to go someplace new and scary like a new career without having someone ahead of you to see how the path is lighted." Michigan State awarded 160 bachelor's degrees in engineering to women last year, 26 percent of the total.

Trailblazers like Fouke also serve as an inspiration to prospective and new female students. "It's sort of a 'If they can do it, I can do it,"' says Kay C. Dee, an assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering at Tulane University, where 28 percent of the bachelor's degrees in engineering were earned by women last year. "It's an immediate, visible confirmation that they wouldn't be out of place. It's important to dispel the myth that if they are going to become an engineer, they are going to be one woman out of 300 men."

Providing that comfort level is key to retaining female students, say many colleges. At Lafayette, faculty members have formal advising duties, but Schaffer believes it is the school's open-door policy that really succeeds. He notes that each time he walks past a particular female colleague's office, there is always a student inside. "It's the willingness to deal with students on an informal basis that is extremely important for us," says Schaffer. Jane Daniels, director of the women in engineering program at Purdue University, places a particular emphasis on that task. "I certainly do a lot of individual talking with students so they know me, they know my face, they know how to get a hold of me," says Daniels. "They do feel that tie, that familiarity with people on campus."