A Century of Advancing Women in Engineering
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March 02, 2015
One hundred years ago, the first woman to receive an engineering degree from The University of Texas at Austin graduated.
Thirty years after that, the university hired its first female engineering faculty member. And forty years later, the Cockrell School of Engineering established one of the first university-led women in engineering programs in the country and the first in the state of Texas.
For nearly a century, Texas Engineering has paved the way, rising above the rest in not only encouraging the advancement of women in the field but in systematically supporting it.
Today, there is a nationwide push to engage and educate women, especially young girls, about the possibilities in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. It’s a push that the Cockrell School is helping to lead and it starts with the nationally recognized Women in Engineering Program (WEP).
Collaborating with faculty, staff and students across the Cockrell School as well as professional engineers, teachers and industry partners, WEP focuses on pre-college outreach and recruitment, retention of college-level engineering students, community building, leadership enhancement and career development. WEP works with Cockrell School and UT Austin leadership to create and grow programs that support female undergraduate and graduate students and help them succeed.
“As one of the leading diversity programs in the country, with the largest participation and strongest programming, WEP has definitely set the standard,” said Tricia Berry, a Cockrell School alumna (B.S. Chemical Engineering '93) who was a student when WEP was created and has served as its director since 2001. “Hopefully we’ve created a blueprint that programs at other universities can use, and we encourage them to join in this nationwide effort.”
As a school, we think beyond enrollment numbers — we want all of our enrolled female students to remain in the Cockrell School and graduate with engineering degrees.
“If we want more women in STEM, and engineering specifically, we need more ways for women to enter the pipeline, both in the years before they even consider applying and in the years they spend on campus,” Berry said.
Beginning with their freshman year, women in Texas Engineering join programs that are designed to support them early in their academic careers, such as First-Year Interest Groups, Women in the Second Year of Engineering, spatial visualization workshops, leadership training retreats and Connections Classes where faculty will spend time visiting with students about their research, hobbies, experiences and educational pathways.
“We’ve seen that involvement in our programs has a profound impact on graduation rates,” Berry said.
Over the past five years, graduation rates for women in engineering at the Cockrell School have jumped from 20 percent of undergraduates to 25 percent. Specifically in UT PGE, the percentage of women entering the program has grown from 22 percent in 2010 to 25 percent in 2014.
“I sought an environment where I would feel comfortable and proud of being an engineer, and the Cockrell School really provides that,” said Patricia Renyut, a petroleum and geosystems engineering senior. “Just as I’ve benefited from interacting with female engineering leaders in the industry, I hope that younger girls will benefit from meeting female engineering students like me.”
When you’ve got the caliber of female faculty, staff and peer role models that we have in Texas Engineering, it helps to reassure our women engineers, like Renyut, that they’ve chosen the right field and particularly the right school.
It’s especially inspiring to see how successful our alumnae have been. To name just a few: Karen Nyberg (M.S. Mechanical Engineering ’96; Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering ’98) is a well-known NASA astronaut who became the 50th woman in space. Sara Ortwein (B.S. Civil Engineering ’80) started as a drilling engineer and is now an executive with ExxonMobil Corp. Rachel Kuhr (B.S. Mechanical Engineering ’10) successfully pitched her current position doing product design and innovation to Mark Cuban and now works with his “Shark Tank” companies to help them succeed from an engineering perspective.
"Seeing the successful and empowered women engineers from UT Austin, hearing about the hurdles they've overcome and connecting with them makes me feel confident that being a girl in engineering will in no way be a barrier to my achievements," Renyut said.
The Cockrell School has not only led the way for decades, it's been defining it. The efforts to recruit, retain and ultimately support women in engineering span the entire field and will only continue to grow.
