Engineering college reaches out to women

When Jessica Gregory began pursuing a degree in mechanical engineering in 2004, freshmen women only accounted for 11.8 percent of the entering class. She was often the only woman in her major courses. However, due to several programs focusing on increasing female enrollment in engineering, Gregory’s experience may no longer be the norm.

For the past decade, the percentage of women studying engineering has seen a nationwide decline, a trend that holds true for Cal Poly. However, Cal Poly has seen a steady increase in the number of freshmen women enrolled, something that could be credited to outreach programs funded by the private sector and donations.

The increase was clearly apparent from 2005 to 2007, when the number of female enrolling into the College of Engineering increased by 22 percent, according to the Cal Poly Institutional Planning and Analysis fact book.

“It’s significant because for the past eight years the percentage of women in engineering nationally has been on the decline,” said College of Engineering Dean Mohammod Noori. “So we have essentially been able to reverse this trend.”

However, not all departments have seen this increase. Biomedical engineering, with women accounting for 32 percent of 338 students, and environmental engineering with women accounting for over 35 percent of 128 students, are the most popular fields for women studying engineering.

Mechanical engineering, Cal Poly’s largest engineering department with over one thousand students, is less than 10 percent female for the past decade. In the second largest department, civil engineering, 19 percent of the students are women.

“In a way it makes me more competitive because I want to be as good as the boys,” Gregory said about being a mechanical engineering student.

The ratio of women to men in the College of Engineering reflects the national trend that Noori said the college is turning around. In 1998, women represented 18.1 percent of undergraduate students of a 3,785 total enrollment in the college of engineering, and as of fall of 2007, that number has declined to 13.6 percent out of a total enrollment of 5,304.

This means that over the past decade, the enrollment of men has increased at a disproportional rate compared to women by 8-to-1. But Noori emphasized the progress of female freshmen enrollment as it notably increased from 14.8 percent in 2005 to 15.6 percent in 2007.

Enrolling in engineering is one thing, graduating with a engineering degree is another. An additional accomplishment in the Cal Poly engineering program has been its ability to award bachelor degrees to a high number of women.

In 2005, the American Society for Engineering Education published that Cal Poly was 23rd in the nation in number of degrees awarded. Since then Cal Poly’s ranking has risen to 16th nationally out of 300 engineering programs in the country.

Noori credits these increases to the cooperation between the outreach programs the college has created to diversify.

“Just last year alone we had 600 kids from elementary to high school who were brought here for a day or two for project activities. We had programs for the parents, especially for first generation students,” he said.

“We started a summer camp two years ago with only 20 students. This past summer it increased to 100 students, mainly women and minorities. We also started an aggressive scholarship program. When I came here we only had $24,000 for freshmen scholarships; we have gone up to $350,000,” Noori continued.

These programs are funded by people who will benefit the most from having a diverse population of engineers: the engineering industry.

“All these programs I mentioned are funded through external funds,” Noori said.

“There are no state budgets to support those activities. Our corporate partners in the industry; (included) Stacey Breitenbach’s operation (Society of Women Engineers) every year has an evening with industry and raises a lot of money for scholarships.”

He stressed he stressed the importance of the programs, emphasizing the fact that women make up 50 percent of the population in this country but few are in the engineering industry.

“It’s a deep-rooted problem, because of the image that is portrayed about engineering overall. It’s changing a little bit, it’s getting better. So we are trying to change that image through outreach activities,” he said.

It’s not just women Cal Poly wants to recruit. Noori said including women as well as minority students in engineering is essential at time when other countries are heavily investing in engineering.

“The United States has been a leader in innovation because of engineering,” he said. “If we lose that, we can become a third-world country.”

The dwindling economy is not helping state schools like Cal Poly in its effort to recruit more women. Budget cuts have forced the college to reduce freshmen enrollment this academic year by 450, Noori said. As a result, admission is more competitive.

As fees continue to augment, Noori said that the extra money can facilitate hiring more faculty resulting in more students and possibly more women and minorities.

“If you want to sustain the growth in engineering, you have to promote and recruit more students from those populations because that is the future,” he said.