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The College places fifth nationally according to the American Society for Engineering Education
Lafayette ranks No. 5 among colleges and universities nationally in the percentage of tenured or tenure-track engineering faculty members who are women, according to the American Society for Engineering Education.
With women comprising 21.9 percent of its tenured or tenure-track engineering faculty, Lafayette is far ahead of the overall representation of tenured/tenure-track women faculty in engineering, which is listed as 11.3 percent in the latest edition of ASEE’s Profiles of Engineering and Engineering Technology Colleges.
“The engineering faculty ranks are slowly becoming more diversified by gender, if less so for underrepresented minorities. The overall representation of women at the tenured and tenure-track level is 11.3 percent. This is up from 8.9 percent as recently as 2001,” writes Michael T. Gibbons, ASEE’s director of data research. The volume cites the most recent available data, which is from fall 2006.
Mary J.S. Roth ’83, interim director of engineering and interim associate provost, believes the College is able to attract a higher amount of female engineering faculty because of Lafayette’s focus on academics. “Many of these faculty members are very interested in being in an environment that has both high academic standards and a focus on undergraduate students.”
Roth also says that having more female engineering professors in the classroom is a benefit to students regardless of their gender. “Students need to see good role models and we as women are able to provide excellent role models for them.”
ASEE also featured the Lafayette engineering program’s supportive environment for women students, accessible faculty, and opportunities for hands-on learning in the October 2005 issue of Prism magazine, which was devoted entirely to the subject of women in engineering. The article “Circle of Support” highlights A.B. engineering graduate Jenny Moerschbacher ’05 as it looks at engineering programs that have successfully helped their women students feel more welcome.
“As engineering programs strive to attract and retain more female students, supportive communities and service components are no longer the exception—they’re becoming the rule,” the article begins. It goes on to spotlight Moerschbacher’s experience:
Although she excelled at both math and science in high school, Jenny Moerschbacher never gave much thought to becoming an engineer. “I could also write and talk to people,” she explains, which had her leaning toward a major in business or economics. It wasn’t until she learned about Lafayette College’s interdisciplinary bachelor of arts degree in engineering that she realized the field might actually suit her skills perfectly—a decision that was reinforced in her junior year when she traveled to a Central American country with a team from Lafayette’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders to work on a project bringing clean water to two villages. “I liked that I could have an effect on people’s lives,” Moerschbacher says. “That was really cool to me.”. . . Such enthusiasm for interdisciplinary studies and service projects hasn’t been lost on engineering programs as they scramble to find new ways to engage and retain more young women like Moerschbacher. Indeed, some schools have seen their numbers of women graduates inch up beyond the national average of 20 percent by shedding rigid curricula and culture in favor of more programs like these.
The article goes on to say, “Not surprisingly, a few open faculty office doors can make a huge difference in whether a student sticks around or not. At Lafayette, where women make up more than 25 percent of engineering graduates, an open-door policy is de rigueur.”