Lafayette earns prominent recognition in Washington Monthly’s 20 Best Colleges for Women in STEM

In rankings announced Aug. 25, Lafayette College has been named America’s fifth best college for women in chemical engineering and sixth best college for women in mechanical and civil engineering. The rankings were compiled by Washington Monthly, a publication based in the Washington, D.C. area covering public affairs. 

Lafayette is the only undergraduate-only institution included in the magazine’s ranking of the nation’s top 20 engineering programs.

Comparing more than 1,000 U.S. colleges and universities, Washington Monthly determined its rankings based on the percentage of recent program graduates who are female, percentage of the institution’s female student population, and median earnings for both men and women five years after graduation. 

“There is a long-standing history and a deep and shared commitment to inclusive teaching and mentoring at Lafayette,” Lauren Anderson ’04, William Jeffers Dean of Engineering, says. “Engineering at Lafayette is a community. Our faculty, staff, and students are actively and consistently working to create welcoming and inclusive spaces of learning.”  

For more than 150 years, Lafayette has excelled at offering engineering education within a broad liberal arts curriculum. The College has established a range of programs to increase the number of women and BIPOC engineering students and faculty, including: 

• The Hanson Center for Inclusive STEM Education, which is one of only two inclusive STEM education centers in the country. Through research opportunities, mentorship, and programming for students and faculty, the Hanson Center fosters a collaborative and supportive environment for historically underrepresented communities in STEM fields. 
• The Clare Boothe Luce and Ally Research Scholars (CBL) program, which provides funding for summer research opportunities for women engineers, has made a big difference. While prior to the initiation of CBL, 21% of female engineering students participated in research, today that number has nearly tripled to 58%. 
• The McCutchen Research Scholars in STEM program, focused on experiential learning opportunities for women and nonbinary students of color, is continuing to contribute to the experience of women historically underrepresented in STEM fields. 
• In 2015, a group of engineering deans, including Lafayette’s Director of Engineering Scott Hummel, gathered at the American Society for Engineering Education’s National Engineering Deans Council meeting to create the Engineering Deans Diversity Initiative, a call to action for engineering programs to invest in inclusive engineering education.

Lafayette’s leadership in this area is helping to address a serious national challenge. According to the Society of Women Engineers, women composed only 16.7% of those employed in architecture and engineering fields last year.