The Barometer Online

Issue date: 2/15/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Andrew Burton Sara Tracy, a graduate student in chemical engineering, works with a distillation column in Gleeson Hall on Tuesday.

Women make up eight percent of the overall engineering workforce in the United States. That's 113,100 women employed compared to the 1.06 million men who occupy the field, said the National Science Foundation.

"There aren't too many role models for girls in the engineering field," said Ellen Momson, director of Women and Minorities in Engineering Program.

Nationwide, women make up 18 percent of undergraduate students in engineering colleges. In contrast, in 1979 the enrollment rate was 12 percent according to the National Science Foundation. These numbers do not exclusively include women who graduate with an engineering degree.

The numbers of women participating in engineering have increased over the past three decades, but only by six percent.

"I remember my experience as an engineering student in the late 1970s. I was one of the first women to go through University of British Columbia's mechanical engineering program," said Katharine Hunter-Zaworski, director of the National Center for Accessible Transportation. "It was like a boys' club."

"The classroom environment was not the most comfortable one. Most of the male professors and students were not respectful," Hunter-Zaworski said.

"I think that now, especially this campus, has focused more on retention and recruitment," Hunter-Zaworski said.

Engineering is a broad field and OSU's College of Engineering includes eight departments.

"We have close to 40 percent of students in the biological and ecological, and chemical engineering departments that are women," Momson said. "Our entering freshman class this fall term was also 40 percent larger in the number of women enrolled."

"We've seen that environmental, biological, and chemical disciplines have always attracted more women than physical or mechanical fields," said Christine Kelly, associate professor in OSU's Chemical Engineering department.

"I don't know if I'd call it a trend but I think women are drawn to the biological and chemical disciplines because they are viewed as people professions," Momson said. "Women may feel like they can make a bigger difference in our society through medicine or environmental research."

Continued...

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