The role of women in American society has changed drastically throughout the century, resulting in more females entering traditionally male-dominated careers.

However, James Melsa, dean of Iowa State’s College of Engineering, is not satisfied with only 18-20 percent of the engineering programs being female.

“We need to get to 50 percent,” he said.

Melsa said the college is putting a great deal of emphasis on trying to get young women to see engineering as a career option.

“We believe it is an excellent career for women,” he said.

In order to increase female enrollment and retention rates, Melsa said the college is working with the Society of Women Engineers and Women in Science and Engineering on a number of programs.

“There’s a whole wide range of things we are doing to expand the opportunities for women,” he said.

According to the College of Engineering Web site, there were 682 undergraduate women enrolled in the college in the fall of 1998 and 130 graduate students, up from 612 undergraduates and 115 graduate students in the spring of 1996.

The percentage of women in each program varies, Melsa said, with chemical engineering approaching 50 percent, but college-wide statistics average out to 18 percent, which is about the national average. The number of women and the counseling available to them definitely has improved, said Karen Zunkel, manager of engineering student services.

“The percentage of women has gone up from the single digit percentages to 16, 17 percent over the last 15 years,” she said. “The percentage will hopefully keep increasing — that’s our goal.”

Zunkel said the engineering college’s stated goal is to graduate about 35 percent women by the year 2003.

“It’s maybe not achievable, but it’s something we’re striving towards,” she said. “If we can get to where the class enrolling in [2003] can reach that graduation percentage, I think we’ve achieved something.”

To pique women’s interest in non-traditional careers such as engineering, the Program for Women in Science and Engineering (PWSE) offers many activities through the university and is run by the Office of the Provost according to the 1997-1998 PWSE Annual Report.

The program has two missions: to encourage females ranging in age and education from kindergarten to graduate school to go into science, engineering and other technical fields, and to support and encourage all women who work in those areas, according to the report.

Krishna S. Athreya, PWSE coordinator, said the program is not only for recruiting women interested in engineering or science at ISU.

“Our program philosophy is to increase the number of women in science and engineering, but as long as they are persisting in science and engineering [somewhere], we feel we have been successful,” she said.

Some of the activities offered by PWSE include career conferences for girls in grades six through 12, a role model directory that allows teachers and counselors to find names of local professional women in Iowa, summer internships at ISU for high school seniors, summer camp at Lake Okoboji for seventh and eighth grade girls and workshops put on with the Moingona Girl Scout Council.

For those already in college, PWSE offers internships at ISU, about 16 annual scholarships for women majoring in science, engineering or other technical fields, a residence hall floor program, mentors, student role models and other on-campus programming including seminars, study groups, workshops and social events.

Athreya said there were 200 freshmen in the residence hall program this year and 100 returning sophomores, juniors and seniors. She said a lot of the high school interns become engineering students at ISU.

“It ends up being a very strong recruiting tool,” she said.

To sponsor events and do community outreach, Athreya said PWSE often works with the Association of Women in Science and the Society of Women Engineers. The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) is ISU’s student-run organization to support women in the field of engineering.

One of the group’s main thrusts is the buddy program, which teams up younger members with older members, said Teresa Mathias, 1998-1999 president of SWE.

“We feel that as long as females in engineering see other females there who are successful … it will provide a positive influence and [women will] stay with it better,” said Mathias, senior in agricultural engineering.

The society, which founded its ISU chapter about 40 years ago, currently has 189 members, 159 of whom are female and 30 who are male, Mathias said.

She said SWE does several outreach programs to young girls and women ranging from pre-school age to high school. In January, Mathias said there was a SWE sleepover with high school girls who had been admitted to ISU’s College of Engineering.

“That was probably our biggest outreach thing for highschoolers,” she said.

Through outreach programs, SWE tries to achieve its goal of letting females know early on what engineering is and that it is a career option.

“We always get positive feedback from the girls who participate in outreach,” she said.

Although Mathias is not satisfied with ISU’s percentage of women in engineering, she said she is glad the college has made improving that percentage a major goal.

“It’s not great right now, but it’s one of their goals they’re working on, and I guess SWE … helps the College of Engineering along with that,” she said.

The college needs to emphasize that women can be successful in engineering, and having another woman in those careers to look up to is the most helpful in retention and recruitment, Mathias said.

Larry Zwagerman, guidance counselor at Ames High School, said teachers and counselors at the high school level also try to encourage female students to keep their spirits high and their options open.

“We do career units for students and keep reminding them about non-traditional careers,” he said.

One of Ames High’s biggest tools is WISE at ISU.

“We get the work out on that program to students here, publicize it and get quite a few applicants for it every year,” he said.

Zwagerman said there are still strides to be made in breaking through societal barriers.

“We still have a sufficient number of girls that will come in and say, ‘Math is really difficulty for me and that’s my only hard subject,'” he said. “They just need some encouragement and not to be afraid of it.”