Engineering school forges bond with Smith

The University announced the creation of a student engineering exchange program with all-female Smith College on Wednesday.

The program, slated to start in 2006, will afford both male and female students the opportunity to study at the other college for a semester.

The program has been in development since last year when University professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering Barrie Royce became the interim dean of graduate affairs for the engineering school.

During his yearlong tenure, Royce said he wanted to start a project that would encourage women to pursue graduate engineering degrees because men outnumber women in the field.

Royce chose Smith College as the partner for the exchange program because he had colleagues who had recently launched an engineering program there.

Maria Klawe, dean of Princeton's School of Engineering and Applied Science, said she believes the program will encourage women to try engineering by giving them a chance to experience a different academic environment in which they will be in the gender majority.

"The percentage of women in engineering is overall only 15 to 20 percent," she said. "For Princeton students, just over 30 percent of engineers are female, so they are never in the majority."

Royce said he also hopes the program will expand Smith's engineering department, which graduated its first class of engineers in 2004 and does not have a graduate program.

"[Princeton] would be of real utility to Smith," he said.

Klawe said the program will exchange six students from each school for the first time in spring 2006.

While students will be able to take advantage of the program, professors will not be included in the exchange. But Klawe said that may change.

"I am hoping that professors will visit from each school," she said.

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In the early phase of the exchange, the future will remain unclear.

"This program could suffer the same problem as other exchange and study abroad programs at Princeton," Royce said. "Students might not want to leave the sacred halls of the University for a semester."

Despite lingering doubts, Royce said Smith offers an "interesting approach" to engineering because of its smaller, liberal arts atmosphere.

Tess Cecil-Cockwell '08, who is pursuing an engineering degree, said the program is a unique opportunity, especially considering the multitude of males in her engineering classes and advising groups.

"Even though women are in the minority in engineering, we have to take classes in other areas here, so I don't feel that women always feel like the minority at Princeton," she said. "However, I imagine that there will be some women who want to try the program."

Anna Robinson, a sophomore Smith engineering student, said she believes the program offers Smith students a great chance to expand from the "small, all-female and liberal environment of Smith into the larger, coed and more conservative atmosphere at Princeton."

"I think [Smith students] might find the Smith-Princeton exchange quite handy since they will be able to more easily fulfill requirements and yet still be spending time off the Smith campus," she said.