SEEKING EQUALITY IN ENGINEERING Over the past 15 years, the University of Delaware’s College of Engineering has tripled its proportion of women faculty. The college’s faculty and deans over the last 15 years have played critical roles in this effort and in the work of UD ADVANCE. Through funding from the National Science Foundation, UD ADVANCE has worked to recruit and retain an increasingly diverse pool of talented faculty to UD. HEATHER DOTY, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and a co-principal investigator of UD ADVANCE, has played an important role in this effort. Although there is more work to do, we have made substantial improvements.
A FEW HIGHLIGHTS: • We have more female faculty members. In 2003, only 7 percent of the tenured/tenure-track faculty in UD’s College of Engineering were women. Now, women make up 21 percent of the full-time engineering faculty. Nationwide, about 16 percent of university engineering faculty are women, according to the American Society for Engineering Education. • We have more women in leadership roles. Of the seven academic departments in UD’s College of Engineering, three are chaired by women. That’s the most in the history of the college. The dean’s cabinet now includes two female associate deans and a female deputy dean. • More women are receiving named professorships. Fifteen years ago, all of the named professors and junior named professors in the College of Engineering were men. Now, four of our named professors and three of our junior named professors are women. • We are bringing more female engineering leaders to visit our campus. The Richard and Janet Haines endowment to the Women in Engineering program has allowed us to substantially enhance our programmatic offerings. For example, we can now offer travel and lodging to engineers from around the country for our career panels. This allows us to bring in professionals from more disciplines and a greater diversity of companies. • We are making progress in terms of the number of undergraduate women in some departments, such as mechanical engineering. This department awarded 17.6 percent of its bachelor’s degrees to women in the 2016-2017 school year, exceeding the national average of 13.8 percent. This fall, female students made up 20.8 percent of mechanical engineering students at UD. FOR MORE, VISIT WWW.UDEL.EDU/004796 UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE | MECHANICAL ENGINEERING 27