At Princeton, female engineers still a rarity

Caitlin Puklin '07 never noticed that she was the only girl in her engineering precept. Though she had attended an all-girls high school, she felt completely comfortable participating in discussions with a group of 12 males — until it came time to study automobiles.

"I did the reading, just like every other week. Except, this time, when I went to precept, I didn't chime in," she said in an e-mail. "The boys were talking a mile a minute about engines and who knows what else using all of this car vocabulary that I didn't understand. I was completely lost."

In a national context, Puklin is somewhat of an anomaly. Besides being a female engineer, she came to the major relatively late, switching from classics to civil engineering in her sophomore year.

Nationwide, less than a fifth of engineering undergraduates are female. For more than a decade, however, Princeton's engineering school, at 34 percent, has enrolled almost twice the number of female undergraduate engineers as the national average, said Peter Bogucki, associate dean for undergraduate affairs at the engineering school. Precise figures were unavailable.

Bogucki attributes this discrepancy between Princeton and the national average to the engineering school's emphasis on attracting and retaining women students and faculty.

"Fifteen years ago at any one time there were one or two women professors in engineering, and now there are 16," he said. "There's been a dramatic increase in the last 15 years that is quite significant. We believe it is just a good idea overall to have more women engineering faculty and more women engineering students, and both things go together."

All students — both men and women — face a difficult course in pursuing a Princeton B.S.E.

"Many students enter not knowing whether [or not] engineering is for them. No engineering is taught in high school, and it's not a subject that they are familiar with," Bogucki said. Many students, he added, "do find that they enjoy applying the tools of math and science to solving problems that affect humanity. Others decide that they prefer the more discovery aspects of science, or they decide they'd rather do something else, and that's fine too."

Some students chose to come to Princeton as engineers because they had excelled in math and science in high school and felt that it was something that they should pursue.

"I felt like it was a matter of principle that if I could do things like science and math well that I should, because that's the best way to contribute to society," Lauren Wang '08 said.

Wang was also attracted to engineering's job security.

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"Engineering is the safe option because you're pretty much guaranteed a profession and job once you leave," she said. "When you come to school like Princeton that's so liberal-artsy, engineering is a really good option. I guess that's what can really draw you to it."

To attract more high school females to apply as engineers, the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) hosts an annual high school colloquium. SWE invites students from local high schools to participate in various activities to get them interested in engineering.

"We hope that they'd apply to Princeton, but the main push is that you can study engineering, and that this is an option for them to open their minds to continuing education in engineering in college," SWE co-president Sara Piaskowy '07 said. "I think that we're trying to meet the needs of high school girls [and] impart an interest in engineering before it's too late."

Ulterior motive?

Some women may apply to Princeton as engineers to make it easier to get accepted — only to switch subjects later.

"I don't know of anyone personally who has done this, but I would guarantee it's happened here," said Puklin, who is also a vice president of SWE. "I think being a woman in engineering does give you a huge advantage. There are even some summer internships or research grants that specify that they are looking for minorities or women."

Most agree that though it may be possible that female students mislabel themselves as engineers to be accepted, it is not a common tactic.

"Aside from a single anonymous post on collegeconfidential.com, I haven't seen an indication that that is a pervasive thing," Bogucki said. "If I became aware of something like that then I would call that to the attention of the admissions office."

The University does not keep track of how many women enter as BSEs but later switch majors, and the Office of Admission could not be reached for comment.

The decision to drop engineering often reflects a variety of factors.

Jessica Baylan '08, who switched from chemical engineering after her freshman year, felt that she did not have enough time to explore whether she wanted to be an engineer or not before she had to declare a department.

"I had been busy completing prerequisites, so I didn't get to explore other departments and was scared that something better for me may be out there," she said.

Baylan, who is a member of the diSiac dance company, also found it difficult to juggle extracurriculars with engineering.

"What made this decision so hard was deciding whether dancing was a good enough excuse, and whether I didn't like engineering just because I was taking prerequisites and not the actual engineering classes that may be more interesting," she said.

Wang attended SWE's high school colloquium before she came to Princeton, and though she has now left engineering, she appreciated the support and care that the engineering school provided, whether it was through SWE or the attentiveness of the administration.

"I left the engineering department because it wasn't for me, not because it was a bad environment," Wang said. "I don't regret it."

Society's support

Though SWE can be a very supportive part of the female engineering experience, its members emphasized that it is not there to isolate female engineers as a special group.

"I feel like there might be this general perception on campus that SWE's purpose is just for 'poor women engineers' that need our own organization," said Shirley Li '08, an ORFE major and SWE-co-president. "It's a fact that our numbers are low compared to male engineers, but we're not saying that we need or deserve special attention."

"I don't think I would go so far as to say that groups like SWE prevent anyone from dropping out of engineering," Puklin said. "I think that if it's making you miserable or you just don't want to do it, then you will drop out."

"I think that what it does do, however, is provide a support system so that people don't go insane," she added. "I think it really makes a huge difference to know that there are other people out there who are just as stressed as you or who have experienced the same things you have."

In fact, many women engineers hardly notice the lopsided male-to-female ratios in their classes.

"I don't even think about the fact that I'm a female in the engineering department," Li said. "I don't think there's anything that kind of sets the female engineers apart form the male engineers or poses a setback."