A move by Princeton University to encourage more female students to join program.
By: David Campbell
A full generation after the start of the women’s movement, women continue to be underrepresented in the field of engineering.
According to Maria Klawe, Princeton University’s dean of engineering, fewer than 20 percent of students studying engineering at the undergraduate level nationwide are women, and recent years have seen a decline following a significant increase over the last two decades. Of professors teaching engineering, only about 8 percent are women, Dean Klawe said.
Princeton’s School of Engineering and Applied Science is seeking to buck the national trend through a unique partnership with Massachusetts-based Smith College, the nation’s first women’s college to have an engineering school.
Advancing their shared goal of increasing the number of women in engineering, the engineering schools at Princeton and Smith have created a spring-semester exchange, slated to start in the spring of 2006, to better prepare women to enter and succeed in graduate school and engineering careers.
The exchange, which is open to men, also seeks to expose students from both schools to different learning environments, Klawe said.
Students at the schools who are in their junior year and rank in the top 20 percent of their classes are eligible for the program.
"One of the major components of our newly created strategic vision is to increase the diversity of students and faculty in our engineering school," said Dean Klawe. "This is a wonderful partnership for both schools to explore approaches to what really makes engineering attractive to women and other underrepresented groups."
At Smith, which graduated its first class of engineers in 2004, the 135 female students in the school’s Picker Engineering Program study with a faculty that is more than 50 percent female.
Dean Klawe said Princeton is well ahead of the national average when it comes to women in engineering.
At Princeton, women make up about 30 percent of graduate and undergraduate engineering students. More than 15 percent of Princeton’s engineering faculty are women, which is about 50 percent greater than the national average.
"Students from both institutions will benefit greatly from the exchange experience, given the unique academic and social environments at each institution," said Joseph O’Rourke, interim director of Smith’s Picker Engineering Program.
"The interaction between the two schools will enable both to enhance their students’ educational experiences and encourage more women to see engineering and applied science as a viable route for making significant contributions to society," Mr. O’Rourke said.
Smith students attending Princeton will have an opportunity to work closely with faculty members and graduate students on cutting-edge research, with the goal of encouraging and preparing the students to go on to graduate school at Princeton and other top institutions.
At Smith, a liberal arts college that does not have a graduate program, Princeton students will benefit from an innovative and interdisciplinary curriculum that encompasses the study of social responsibility and sustainability.
Participants from Princeton will also get a chance to study in an academic environment where most of the students are female, Dean Klawe said.
Students in the engineering exchange will take a normal load of courses at their host institution and conduct an independent project. Special living arrangements will be made for Princeton men who participate in the exchange. Such accommodations are already in place for male students in other exchange programs at Smith.
Princeton and Smith have not yet fixed a formal number of openings for the program, but Dean Klawe estimated that from six to eight students could take part in the first exchange.

