What young women should consider in deciding on which field of engineering and which university to attend for their undergraduate degree

An engineering career provides a foundation for a wide range of career opportunities. Prospective students should review the quality of the research, curricular content and academic opportunities at the universities they are considering. They should investigate the career options that each field offers. They should consider the overall campus environment and the strengths of related programs in humanities, social sciences, sciences and mathematics. In addition, women students should evaluate the educational and professional environment they chose to enter as well. Working with a team of women faculty, I have started to compile useful questions to consider when you evaluate programs and universities. Our hope is to be able to provide comparative data as well in the future.

  1. What is the percentage of female faculty in the department? A department with fair hiring practices should be able to hire women at the rate that they graduate with PhDs. A good department can hire at a higher rate by considering talented applicants in a wide range of related departments, as is done with male faculty recruits.
  2. What is the percentage of female students at the undergraduate and graduate levels? How do these percentages compare to other departments and other universities? If the department percentage is low compared to other departments or universities there is probably a reason. Women are smart and are perfectly capable of avoiding toxic environments. Be careful if you do enter one and make sure your skin is thick and you have protective gear.
  3. What is the retention rate of women faculty compared to male faculty? My own department in Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley has hired 8 women faculty and has retained only half of them to date. The four that left were not happy campers. Two of the remaining women were a hair's width away from leaving, but decided to stay for personal or family reasons. The stress level on the remaining other two seems extraordinarily high. On the other hand, the retention rate for male faculty is over 90%. This disparity is a symptom of an unhealthy environment for women in the department that can't help but trickle down to students.
  4. How many women faculty in the department have children compared to men? If there is a disparity here, question whether the environment is family-friendly. If you are a graduate student, ask how many women graduate students have children compared to men? If there is a disparity and you are considering having a child while a graduate student, you may want to look elsewhere.
  5. How many of the women faculty are in (or have been in) leadership positions in the department. This would typically be at the Chair or Vice Chair level. If this is low or even nonexistent this is an indication of a major climate problem. If senior women faculty have a track record of leadership outside the department this is an even stronger indicator that the department is not valuing women with leadership talent within its own department and a strong indicator of a chilly climate within the department.
  6. Is there a record of sexual harassment? Search the web for any news articles that discuss any cases of sexual harassment in the department. Ask women faculty if there is any history. If so, did the department chair and campus take appropriate action immediately? Or was the problem allowed to continue over an extended period of time.
  7. Does the physical environment look like a men's locker room? Clearly images of naked or sexually provocative women on the walls or on computer screen savers indicate a major problem in the department and would, in fact be legally actionable. Fortunately, sexual harassment laws have been successful in removing these blatant images of sexism. However, the environment may still retain subtle attributes of a men's club. For example, do you see images of gender equitable contributors to technology on the walls in the building and seminar rooms? Or are the images of engineering mostly of men? The overall appearance can have a huge psychological impact on gender equity and overall well being of female students. It took me 15 years to remove approximately 50 81/2" x 11" photos of our emeritus faculty (all men) from the walls of our seminar room. For 15 years, I and other women faculty, students and prospective faculty complained and there was no action. Minority students complained as well as the image of 50 mostly white men (there was 1 Asian) staring at them during classes and seminars really sent the message that they didn't belong to this club. I was only able to accomplish this change through intense efforts over an extended period of time and a large investment of energy and funds.
  8. Is the classroom environment friendly to women? Ask to sit in on courses that interest you. Observe whether the instructor engages both male and female students equally. Or does the instructor tend to call on his favorite male students or, even worse, allow a loud mouth take over the class discussion. Even if women are vocal, are their voices heard and built upon in the class discussion? Or does the instructor allow male students to reword a female students remarks and hijack it as his own. Or does the instructor allow male students to talk noisily or even disrespectfully when other students speak?
  9. Is there a balance of women and men speakers in the departmental seminar series, guest lecturers or at other events? Long gone are the days when there were few women in engineering. Today there are excellent women speakers on all subjects on our faculties, in industry and in government. If a speaker series does not include a blance of women speakers, this is a clear sign that the organizers are practicing either implicit or explicit discrimination.
  10. Does your curriculum include components that address the social impact of technology on society? Although not entirely a gender issue, women students are more likely than men to go into engineering because they "want to change the world". If this is important to you, see how many courses or components of courses use a human-centered design approach or have curricular elements on the social implications of technology. Does the department offer courses on service learning, where students apply course material to projects that benefit the local community? How developed is the department's research and curricular offerings in green design and manufacturing and overall sustainability? How many faculty consider these areas their primary area of research?
  11. Where does the funding for research in the department come from? Are agencies or companies funding the research places that you would consider for employment? If not, you might want to look elsewhere as funding does tend to influence the overall research environment and the problems that are targeted.

 

Alice M. Agogino, PhD, PE
Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Chair, Berkeley Division of the UC Academic Senate
PI, www.smete.org; www.needs.org
For scheduling: contact Marilyn Kwock <mkwock@berkeley.edu; 510-643-5574
5136 Etcheverry Hall, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720-1740
(510) 642-6450 (voice), (510) 643-5599 (fax)
agogino@berkeley.edu
http://www.me.berkeley.edu/faculty/aagogino/

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Last updated: 25 September 2005