Volume 12, Number 3, 2004
When Alicia Walsh was a UD undergraduate in the 1970s, majoring in mechanical engineering, she took part in a survey that she says really got her thinking about her future as a woman in a male-dominated field.
Walsh, EG '81, '88M, says she answered questions indicating that she planned to work after graduation, that she might marry and have children someday and that, if so, she expected to return to work after becoming a mother. She was taken aback, she says, by the next question: Who will care for your children while you're working?
"It occurred to me at that point that there might be some trade-offs that I'd encounter as a woman in the profession," Walsh says. "If I'd had some role models--maybe women who had interrupted their careers temporarily to have children or who had found other ways to balance work and family--I think I would have thought about these issues a lot earlier."
Walsh, who went on to marry, have three children and earn a master's degree in electrical engineering, now serves as that kind of role model herself. She works in software development for the DuPont Co. in Wilmington, Del., and is a volunteer with the College of Engineering's new mentoring program for women students. The program kicked off this fall, with about 50 alumnae who live in the region and are working engineers signing on to serve as informal advisers to undergraduate women in the College.
"The goal of the program is to expose women students to career choices, educate them about workplace demands, provide for discussion of family-workplace issues and, perhaps most importantly, have them meet successful women engineers," Dean Eric Kaler said in a letter announcing the program and inviting alumnae to volunteer as mentors.
The College, Kaler also noted in the letter, "is not now in the forefront of support and development of women engineers, and we would like to change that." He called the mentoring program a first step in those efforts.
And, it's off to a great start, according to Pam Cook, a professor of mathematics at UD who works part time in the College of Engineering as an associate dean and is overseeing the program.
"We've had such enthusiastic response from our first contacts with practicing engineers that I expect the mentoring program to be successful and to expand," she says. "This is something that the engineers we've contacted seem very interested in doing."
Cook says women engineering students and practicing engineers sometimes feel isolated in the predominantly male profession. The 2000 U.S. census, for example, found that women made up just 10.6 percent of all working engineers. The fields of industrial and chemical engineering have the largest percentages of women, while the smallest percentage is found in mechanical engineering.
In higher education nationally, about 20 percent of undergraduate engineering students are women--the same proportion found in UD's College of Engineering. Graduate enrollment in the College is about 26 percent women.
"It's important for women to see that there are support systems available and that there are others like them who are successful in the field," Cook says. "Many of those who volunteered to be mentors with our program are fairly recent graduates, and they're very eager to talk about their own experiences in school, in the job market and in their careers."
The mentoring project matches working professionals with students, most of whom met one another at the kickoff reception. From that point on, Cook says, each pair will decide how often they want to meet or communicate by phone or e-mail. Some will likely arrange for the student to visit the mentor's workplace or for other shared professional activities, she says. Another group get-together was held on campus during National Engineers Week in February.
Although each mentor-student relationship is individualized by the participants, Cook says the program has compiled a list of topics the pairs might want to discuss. They include such questions as: What credentials are important for getting a job and being promoted? What are the interactions among employees like in your company (an important issue for many women, who tend to prefer jobs that involve teamwork and interpersonal communication)? What family-friendly policies does your company have?
These kinds of questions can be a useful guide to get students thinking about subjects to discuss with their mentors, Cook says, but she found during the introductory reception that there was no shortage of conversation.
"I had been advised to plan some ice-breaking activities for the event, but I didn't have to do anything," she says. "Everyone at the reception was very enthusiastic about the program and about meeting one another. They had so much to say that I was just amazed."
One of those attending the reception was Deborah Grubbe, an engineer with the DuPont Co. and a graduate of Purdue University, which has been in the vanguard of efforts among universities to attract and support women in engineering. A resident of Delaware since 1978, Grubbe says she is pleased with the UD initiatives.
"I'm really excited that the University has decided to do this mentoring program and other efforts, and I applaud them for it," she says. "These 'Women in Engineering' programs do two things: They help retention of undergraduates, so that women who enroll in engineering stay and graduate in the field. And, they prepare women for the workplace."
Grubbe notes that the percentage of new engineering graduates who are women has been steady each year since 1985, but women are a much smaller proportion of the engineering workforce. Something needs to be done while women are still in college to help them make the transition to work so that they remain in the field, she says, adding that employers must help in this effort as well.
"There's a brain drain among women, and as engineers, we can't afford to have a brain drain of anyone," she says. "Women bring something different to the workplace, and it's a positive difference that's good for a company's bottom line."
Amanda Barker, EG '04, describes the mentoring kick-off event as "informative and fun." She attended as co-president of the UD chapter of the Society of Women Engineers, which sponsored the February reception.
"I feel as though we students can learn so much from current professional female engineers, and engineers in general, about how to find a job and what to expect once we enter the workforce," Barker says. "I hope this program continues, because I think it will be extremely beneficial to the female engineering undergraduates."
Another student, Christine Cardinal, EG '05, says she is participating in the program to help her as she makes important decisions about her future. Her mentor is Alicia Walsh.
"I felt that it would be worthwhile to have a second opinion that I could trust," Cardinal says. "She is a great resource who is qualified to give advice on anything from study habits and summer jobs to graduate school and life after college."
In general, Cardinal says, "It's nice to have someone to talk to who has been through this before and can put it into perspective."
Walsh agrees that the mentoring program "certainly has started out well. Being at the reception and seeing a whole room full of professional women who've all found different paths to success was something I thought was very impressive."
More information about the College's initiatives for women is available on the web at [www.engr.udel.edu/wei/wei-mission.html].
--Ann Manser, AS '73, CHEP '73