VOLUME XVI, NUMBER 22

3 INNOVATION ABSTRACTS

PUBLISHED BY THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR STAFF AND ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT (NISOD), COLLEGE OF EDUCATION, THE

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN « WITH SUPPORT FROM THE W. K. KELLOGG FOUNDATION AND THE SID W. RICHARDSON FOUNDATION

 

Engineering Openings—Women Wanted

During the first week of classes in 1985, when I started
teaching at Ohlone College, two young women from my
graphics class came to my office and said they wanted to
take my statics class, but they did not have the prerequi-
site. “Oh,” I said, “What's your grade point average?”
“Four O,” they said. “You've got all A’s, both of you?” I
countered in wonder. “Yes,” they said. “Well, go look at
the textbook and if it looks okay to you, I'll see you
Thursday,” I replied.

The next time I saw them was in graphics class, not the
statics class. They told me, “We looked at the book and
decided we don’t have the time to do all the problems.”
“There are 100 problems at the end of every chapter, and
only assign about 10 a week,” I replied. They were
adamant: “We don’t care what is assigned; we do all the
problems at the end of the chapters.” Looking back, this
was the beginning of my involvement with women in
engineering. They left in the spring with 55 semester
units and graduated two years later from the Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science departments of the
University of California, Berkeley.

I began to notice that my female students seemed to
ask different types of questions than men asked; they
were not as concerned about revealing what they did not
know. They wanted to get everything right. There was
usually only one woman in every class, rarely two. Since
the female engineering students I knew were so good, it
seemed odd there were so few. I read what I could find
about women in or out of engineering and decided they
needed a club to facilitate networking—a word that came
up repeatedly in articles about women in engineering.

Feeling certain that the club would be more successful
if started by the students, I circulated a flier in the
engineering and math classes, suggesting the advantages
of networking. Ina few days a young woman knocked
at my door and said, “We need a club.” Her name was
Wendy Chan, and she became the first “Chief Engineer”
of the Ohlone Women Engineers club, OWE. I became
the advisor. | recruited a female math teacher to be co-
advisor since we had no temale engineering teachers.

Inviting women engineers to campus to speak was the
OWF’s initial activity. I gave extra credit to all who
attended from my classes. These speakers proved to be
popular and gave me the idea to use women engineers as

guest speakers in my Introduction to Engineering course.

The club took advantage of the outreach offer by the
SWE, the Society for Women Engineers student chapter
at the University of California, Berkeley, to send some
members to Ohlone to explain how to get into the
university and how to stay in. We asked for female
community college transfer students so that our students
could imagine themselves making such a transfer. Akiko
Inoue, a transfer from Ohlone who was a former chief
engineer of our club, our outstanding engineer in 1993,
and a winner of a $1,000 SWE, Santa Clara chapter,
scholarship, returned last year to tell about her experi-
ences. This presentation was well-attended. I admit to
feeling proud.

The club arranged for industrial field trips to IBM,
Logitech, and Silicon Graphics. We made certain in
advance that we would see and could talk to women
engineers. I now use the same approach for my “Intro”
class field trips.

In the late spring, OWE sponsors the Engineers Feast,
a potluck dinner designed to celebrate the successful
transfer of our engineering students to various four-year
schools. In the past three years we have had 21, 29, and
27 students transferring; and of those 9, 5, and 5
repectively, were women. These are minimum numbers
as there is no formal tracking of transfers. This feast
features a successful practicing woman engineer as the
main speaker. Awards are given for the traditional
“Most Likely to Succeed” and the not-so-traditional
“Most Helpful to Other Students.”

I discovered that Purdue had more women engineers
than any other university, and one of the female profes-
sors encouraged me to copy their Women in Engineering
course, which she felt was helpful in retaining women
students. It was easy to find a super female engineer
who was eager to teach the course.

Each semester the Women In Engineering Seminar
must recruit students to avoid being cancelled. Iam
convinced that contact with women engineers and
networking are the two most important means of recruit-
ing and retaining women engineering students. This
course provides ample opportunity for both. However,
even beginning engineering students are not inclined to
take courses that are not required. Putting up posters

 

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THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR STAFF AND ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT (NISOD)
Community College Leadership Program, Department of Educational Administration
rs College of Education, The University of Texas at Austin, EDB 348, Austin, Texas 78712