Women’s 1995 engineering enrollment tops 30 percent

September 11, 1995
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  • umichnews@umich.edu

ANN ARBOR—The University of Michigan is doing its part to guarantee that tomorrow’s engineers—the technical experts who design our cars, manage our manufacturing plants and create new bioengineered drugs and medical devices—are much more likely to be women.

Just over 30 percent of the more than 1,000 first-year students enrolled in the U-M College of Engineering this September are women—the highest percentage in the college’s history and nearly twice the national average.

The number of U-M undergraduate women preparing for careers in engineering has been climbing since the late 1980s, according to Michael G. Parsons, associate dean for undergraduate education. In Fall 1994, statistics compiled by the Engineering Workforce Commission showed that the U-M College of Engineering ranked third in the country—just behind the University of Puerto Rico and MIT—in its percentage of female engineering undergraduates. At that time, 25 percent of the more than 4,500 engineering undergraduates enrolled in the College of Engineering were women. The national average was 18.6 percent.

The increasing number of women engineers-in-training at the U-M is no accident, according to Parsons. It is the result of a deliberate policy decision and the efforts of many individuals and organizations.

Admissions standards for the College of Engineering are among the highest in the country and are more rigorous than any other college or school at the U-M. ” The academic performance, retention rates and graduation rates of our female engineering students are virtually the same as those of male engineering students,” Parsons said.

” One of the strategic goals within the College is to build women’s enrollment up to 40 percent and make U-M the ‘place of choice’ for young women who want to study engineering,” Parsons said. ” We are doing this to educate outstanding Michigan engineers and to make all our students’ educational experience a model of the year 2020 when 40 percent of the engineering work force will be women. It’s the best preparation we can give our students for the future in which they will live and work.”

” The biggest obstacle we face in achieving this goal is the dwindling pool of young women in high school who are interested in science or engineering careers,” said Sharon Burch, director of transfer admissions and recruitment for the U-M College of Engineering. ” Engineering provides a wide variety of applications and tremendous career paths for women, as well as opportunities to express creativity not available in other professions. But we need more female role models in engineering to show young women how they can succeed.”

Parsons credits an active university-wide outreach effort to high schools and middle schools for the upward trend in women’s enrollment in the College of Engineering, including:

• A summer engineering exploration program for high school students and regular visits to middle schools and high schools organized by the U-M student chapter of the Society of Women Engineers.

• The ” Summer Science for Girls” program established by the U-M Center for the Education of Women which brings middle school girls to campus for hands-on science activities.

• The Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) wing established in a U-M residence hall by the Office of Student Affairs and the Center for the Education of Women where about 100 first- and second-year engineering students live and study alongside other young women pursuing degrees in science-related fields.

• Expanded College of Engineering merit scholarship programs which provide increased financial support for women and minority students.

” We still have a long way to go, but the level of commitment within the college and the university makes me confident we will achieve the 40 percent goal by the year 2000,” Parsons said. ” The more women we enroll, the more successful our future recruiting efforts will be,” Burch added.

Center for the Education of WomenWomen in Science and Engineering