Women in Engineering

Colleges and Universities A-Z Penn State
1

I’m wondering if anyone has feedback about engineering programs that are supportive of women. We have seen the whole range. One school said that “STEM programs across the country are trying to recruit young women” when we expressed concern at their paltry 20% women in their engineering department. They had no internal plans to increase their percentage.

We also visited a school with 42% women students in their engineering program and they said that they provide Unconscious Bias Training for all of their Professors and staff. They clearly decided that they needed to actively change the climate of their program and it was making a difference.

My daughter would rather join a program more akin to the latter and I am just wondering if anyone else has been asking these questions when visiting schools.

Thanks in advance!

2

@Susanb33 1. I am quite surprised that you found a university that had a 42% rate of women in engineering if it’s Tufts their # was quoted at 50% three years ago.
I have a current Junior in Computer Engineering she chose PSU for their Women in Engineering program - it is a student mentoring program to help the female students in their first two years. Along with mentoring there are weekly meetings called WEP Wednesday’s where they can request tutoring, etc
To back track they go to PSU 3 days early to get acquainted with the university, bonding activities, write their resume, have mock interviews, and get prepared for their first career fair.
PSU Society of Women Engineers also run Professional development programs and bonding functions throughout the year. Additionally they have meet and greets with recruiters before career fairs.
There are many opportunities in coeducational clubs as well, but look up PSU Engineer Ambassadors and view the number of women that were selected for the club.
Depending on your major the National statistics for female engineers are low- it’s no better then when I went to school in 1980! Computer Engineering being the lowest at approx 5%.
My daughter chose PSU for the opportunity to be with women of like interests because she knows that in her industry the numbers are even lower (2%).
If you get a chance attend the Women in Engineering meeting at an Engineering open house it will give you a lot of information regarding the available programs.
I will also state that she has a good number of female professors too.

3

skibunny2 thanks so much for taking the time!! PSU accepted her last week and is definitely on the list. Female professors would be a strength as well- we all need mentors! Thank you!!

4

“Unconscious Bias Training” that is silly. That is a scam… trying to stop thoughts that you are unaware of.

Engineering Bachelor’s Degrees Awarded
to Women by School

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology 634
  2. Texas A&M University 478
  3. Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 464
  4. University of Michigan 438
  5. Purdue University 412
  6. The Pennsylvania State University 410
  7. University of California, Berkeley 374
  8. Virginia Polytech. Institute and State U. 367
  9. Massachusetts Institute of Technology 360
  10. Cornell University 360
  11. University of California, San Diego 359

Percentage of Engineering Bachelor’s
Degrees Awarded to Women
by School*

  1. SUNY, Coll. of Environ. Sci. and For. 56.6%
  2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology46.6%
  3. Tulane University 46.6%
  4. Olin College of Engineering 44.2%
  5. Columbia University 41.0%
  6. Cornell University 40.7%
  7. Howard University 40.4%
  8. The George Washington University 40.0%
  9. California Institute of Technology 39.6%
  10. Dartmouth College 39.2%

Women Tenured/Tenure-Track Engineering
Faculty by School

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology 101
  2. University of Michigan 86
  3. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign78
  4. Virginia Polytech. Institute and State U. 75
  5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology 74
  6. Arizona State University 73
  7. Purdue University 68
  8. University of Washington in Seattle 68
  9. The Pennsylvania State University 67
  10. Texas A&M University 65
5

@Susanb33 your welcome. Penn States goal is 50/50 in engineering - they are trying, and do outreach to younger children as well. Since you mentioned mentors I will say that is what PSU excelled at. So if she’s interested the SWE (Society of Women in Engineering) runs a SWE Stayover in the Spring for new prospective students and parents to discuss the programs for support and engage with students and faculty. I will also state that my daughter had an internship last summer where professors and other students reached out to females that they knew at the company to meet with her( one of her professors former student’s Aunt met with her).
I feel that the early support that she received enabled her to seek leadership roles in her freshman year.
I do agree with @Greymeer every school does unbiased training, but it was important to my daughter when she was researching schools until she emailed each Engineering department (of the schools she was interested in)and realized that was standard.
My suggestion have your daughter find what’s important to her now and her future such as research, internships, clubs, professor availability (watch this one and ask current students I will say PSU is great so far), Engineering clubs, entrepreneur opportunities, etc
Also when you go to accepted student days see if she is comfortable living there- I feel it’s such an important question that most people overlook.
Also speak with the engineer tour guides- they will give you honest answers. Reach out to Engineer Admissions besides getting your questions answered ask to contact the support program directors and get student contacts- this way she can discover opportunities she would be unaware of. Good luck in your search for a decision.

6

I just want to assure you that your daughters will do fine. I was a female engineering student in the early '80s, when there weren’t that many women. I felt totally accepted. I was just one of the group. I went to UT-Austin, a big school similar to Penn State. My engineering profs were great.

I would encourage you not to hint to your daughters that they will have difficulties as a woman studying engineering. They should go in with a positive attitude, work hard, and have fun! Join study groups and go to prof’s office hours OFTEN. Ask for help when needed. :slight_smile:

7

My daughter went to one of the smaller tech schools where women are still only about 30% of all students, and a smaller percentage in engineering. She was in civil which has fewer women.

She did fine, didn’t even notice.

At any of the big flagships, the number of women on campus is going to be close to 50% (if not more) and the number in engineering is going to be close to 50%.

8

@MaineLonghorn thank you and although I get your point here are the facts the employment rate of women has not changed since you were in school! Think about that- I went into financial industry at the same time - which is an industry that’s at least 50/50. Now I will state some women get recruited for their exceptional abilities into the financial and consulting business, but I would like to see those numbers move forward. Also my daughter did not want to do fine- she had high expectations so she felt going to a university that enabled her to graduate the strongest future employee she could be was her best path.

9

I wanted to go to the university that would give me the best engineering education possible, and that was UT-Austin for me. If I had gone in with the expectation that I would struggle as a woman, I would have. I went in thinking of myself as “an engineering student,” not “a female engineering student.” I don’t think we can blame universities for the low number of female engineers. I think it’s rooted way back in early education.

10

My daughter graduated with dual degrees in Computer Science (School of Engineering) and French and Francophone Studies from Penn State a few years ago. She had a terrific experience. She was very, very active in the Society of Women Engineers and had terrific mentors in woman professors. She attended the Grace Hopper Conference every year, had fantastic internships and a job upon graduation.

11

@skibunny2 the employment rate of women has not changed since you were in school.

Employers go to great lengths to land female engineers. If you were to poll engineering students prior to graduation, I guarantee that the ladies have employment offers at a conservative 2 to 1 rate to the men, and with higher compensation.

Women just don’t like engineering. My first real world job engineering group out of college was roughly 50% female. Within 5yrs most of the women had married, started families or moved to sales/marketing/phone support. There were only a couple of group leaders that were women and they were unmarried.

I once saw the male/female personality divide summed up as, “Men are interested in things. Women are interested in people.”

12

My daughter has applied to Penn State for Computer Engineering. She was concerned about the number of women in the major as well. I must say she was met with a great deal of negativity overall about the difficulty of the major in general and how much harder it could be for a woman, from family and friends.

We attended information sessions at several large universities in Maryland, Delaware, NJ, NY, PA and Connecticut. It became very clear to us these universities are quite interested in not just recruiting, but retaining females in the engineering major. I was quite impressed with how welcoming each of the schools were to her and how positive she felt about all of the experiences we had.

Separately, she met with a Chemical Engineering professor, at one of the universities she applied to, to understand what her experience in the field was like. The professor was beyond helpful, offered her encouragement and to mentor her throughout her career. She spent a considerable amount of time with her and also introduced her to other females professors at the college.

I think Penn State would be a wonderful university for my daughter to attend for computer engineering. I am just concerned that achieving a 3.0 in classes like physics, chemistry and math may be a bit of a challenge to gain entrance to her major. Any input would be appreciated.

13

That’s quite the stereotype.

Probably has more to do with the fact that we don’t support parents in the workplace in this country and women are more likely to be expected to put their careers on hold if they want children.

14

^That’s quite the stereotype.

I don’t disagree. But nevertheless it is true.

Come back here in 10 years and tell us what engineering project your daughter is currently working on…

No one stops or discourages women from being engineers, they stop themselves.

15

@Greymeer Yes, there IS such a thing as “unconscious bias”. In fact it’s extremely common. That when you truly believe that you’re not biased, yet you somehow always will select a certain type of person as your lawyer or accountant, or doctor, or babysitter, etc. You won’t think “I won’t choose that person as a doctor because he’s Black”, but, when given the choice, you will somehow almost always choose the White doctor for what you think are other reasons.

Program committees of big engineering conferences consistently select only men as keynote speakers, even though about 30% of the well known figures in many engineering fields are women. My wife was recently on a panel with other seniot figures in CS, and, while every male member of the panel was introduced as “Dr. X”, or “Prof Y”, my wife, a full professor and a PhD, was introduced as “Mrs. FirstName”. The person who did the introducing didn’t think that he was being discriminatory, or that he was biased against women. He just unconsciously assigned less importance on my wife’s academic credentials (her PhD, BTW, is from one of the very best graduate schools for CS).

Recruiters consistently demonstrate bias in hiring when thee is a photo or a name that is easily identifiable for gender or ethnicity, while, when there is nothing on the resume which allows them to identify gender or ethnicity, that bias disappears. Most of these recruiters are absolutely certain that they are not biased against anybody.

When students write evaluations of instructors, the descriptors of male and female instructors differs significantly. In a study of online teaching, in which the actual gender of the instructor was unknown, students evaluated instructors who were identified online as males significantly higher than the instructors who were identified online as females, regardless of the actual gender of the instructor (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10755-014-9313-4).

I am sure than a significant number of those students would adamantly deny that they are biased against female instructors, and actually believe that. Yet, their evaluations were lower for instructors who they thought were female than for instructors who they thought were male.

My wife has been in CS for almost 30 years, and is extremely familiar with the amount of unconscious bias there is in engineering. She’s also studied the effects of training, and it works. The point of the training is to move the unconscious biases to the conscious mind, and deal with them.

Here is the thing - removing bias is extremely difficult, and perhaps, in some cases, impossible. The point is to identify the bias and counter its effects on your decision making. Denying that unconscious biases just allows those biases to continue to influence one’s decisions.

Of course, refusing to test whether one has unconscious biases often means that a person doesn’t have many unconscious biases - just a lot of biases which they deny.
If, after exploring your decisions making, you discover that you have none, than great. However, most people do, and very often the biases are ones which surprised them.

16

I’m happy to say that my daughter has great role models who have had longevity in engineering and managed to raise children, get promoted, and have great success in their careers. I sincerely hope she follows in their footsteps.

Women are not just choosing to stop engineering on their own for no reason. There have been a number of papers published that discuss the subtle, and not so subtle, negative environments towards women at many engineering based companies.

17

@MomfromPenn so happy your daughter wants to be a computer engineer. Yes your daughter may struggle - not every student does, but they are rare. The struggle is more in one class then GPA overall. The things my daughter has done to be successful are: office hours (starting the first week), free tutoring, setup work groups with her SWE friends (although as a Junior she now has a group from her classes), stay ahead (especially in your labs, and plan your classes strategically.
Now she took CALC 1 and 2 even though she got a 5 on AP because she wanted to get the easy A (and get used to a Math college course), she has late dropped a class (she took 18 credits knowing one class would be difficult and will take next Spring). Some students take classes at other universities (they make sure credits will transfer) over the summer so they don’t get calculated into GPA (I think you need at least a C), and some take the second Physics course in a branch campus over the summer in order to get an A. There are many ways to be successful as long as you have support.
The summer never worked for my daughter because she had internships from freshman year on. In hindsight she wished she took summer courses before freshman year.
She has fun, and is extremely involved. She loves what she does and loves working for it. She does work harder then most because she has to in order to get the grades.
Hope this helps!

18

I really appreciate all the feedback on this topic!! It has been good food for thought. I really appreciate all of the suggestions for how to be involved and find the support she needs. Cheers to all the parents with strong daughters!! My daughter has always had classes with boys and male math and science teachers and she was raised to believe that she is every bit as capable of math and science as any boy. Thankfully she knows it is true.

At the same time, I think having some women as mentors as she moves forward can certainly influence her success. Thank you, Greymeer, for the stats.

When I started at PSU many years ago for BioChem I didn’t find a mentor(yes I was to blame but I didn’t know better) and although I was perfectly capable of the math and science classes, I switched majors. I haven’t looked back or regretted my decision, but I don’t want my daughter to switch out of engineering because she lacks a mentor. If she switches majors I want it to be because she found a passion for something else!

MWolf thank you for the examples that explain why I asked this question in the first place. Your post is eye opening and I appreciate that you took the time to share.

19

^ There have been a number of papers published that discuss the subtle, and not so subtle, negative environments

A rate of less than 2%.

https://www.aauw.org/research/solving-the-equation/

20

Skibunny I am guessing what I heard was 42% admissions for women in their STEM program- clearly it was not their graduation rate for women in engineering! Greymeer’s stats make that quite clear.