Women scarce in UA engineering department

Jeffrey Williams Arizona Daily Wildcat Dr. Mary Poulton, associate professor of mining and geological engineering, works at her office computer. Poulton says that about 16 percent of women are receiving engineering degrees, which is up from the 1960s when only 0.4 percent of women earned engineering degrees.

Mary Poulton, associate professor of mining and geological engineering, said women in the field pioneer without role models.

"There is no popular culture for engineers except Dilbert and that's not the way we want to portray engineering," she said.

But, the notion that engineers are middle-aged men with thick glasses sitting in front of computers is slowly eroding.

In the 1960s, women made up 0.4 percent of University of Arizona engineering majors. Today, the number reaches 16 percent, but still ranks last for scientific fields, said Poulton.

"Engineering has probably the lowest number of women in any discipline," she said. "I think it's because of the isolation and the way we teach engineering to women."

Out of 2,411 UA students in the engineering program, 405 are female, and 5 percent of the department's faculty are women.

Engineering and Mines Associate Dean Vern Johnson said the department has made marked effort to recruit female faculty members.

"We've certainly been working to see that there are more women faculty," Johnson said. "Role models are certainly an important thing."

In the other sciences, such as medicine and geological sciences, women have hit the 50 percent mark.

Maria Leal, a chemical engineering senior who plans to graduate in May, said some women may be intimidated by the male-dominated profession.

"Most girls are intimidated by the math and science and the reputation engineers are stuck with," she said.

Leal said she has been faced with insults such as "do you have a calculator in your purse?" and "do you just sit there and do math?" She called the comments annoying, adding that television and society rarely put women in engineering roles.

The application of engineering in everyday life is also not emphasized enough, Poulton said.

"They don't point out the fact that engineering is always done in a social context," she said. "We don't bring that real-world experience in as well as we could."

Sarah Dahl, an engineer at UA's Electrical and Computer Engineering's Microelectronics Laboratory, and Leal are the only females that work in the lab.

Dahl heads the "mini-Intel" lab which takes plain silicon wafers and converts them into working electrical devices.

"I've noticed the guys really like it, they get to be a little more human and behave more," Dahl said.

"Women have to break the mold," Dahl added.

Leal said her life after graduation is set, after all the work she put into obtaining an engineering degree.

"I see the end," she said. "I have a degree and a job and a secure future."