Rebecca Dailey is the pioneer of a brand new club on campus, Civil Ladies in Engineering. She had the idea last spring and recruited other women in the College of Engineering to form a cabinet and members of the faculty to be advisers.

There is the Society of Women Engineers for women in any engineering program at Iowa State, but the Civil Ladies in Engineering is the only club on campus exclusively for women in civil engineering.

Dailey, junior in civil engineering, is working toward combining with the women of construction engineering because they take many of the same classes.

There are 55 girls on the club email list, but they have about 25 women active in the events and activities that they attend on a regular basis, and are looking to expand.

Dailey hopes her efforts will build stronger networks for women in engineering who are interested in the same things.

“This club is a kind of gateway for women going into engineering,” Dailey said. “One of our goals is to help girls become more confident as they are going into this field.”

This semester was a trial run for the Civil Ladies. They figured out funding and focused on freshman and sophomore involvement.

“Next year, we definitely want to try and get more juniors and seniors involved, as well as the incoming freshmen girls coming into the civil engineering program,” Dailey said.

The number of females in engineering is rising, but there are still very few girls in each class.

“I’m usually the only girl in my tutor groups,” Dailey said.

Emily Knight, sophomore in industrial engineering, helped discover the club and sits on its cabinet. She helped Dailey with anything she needed from the get-go. Knight helped plan meetings and social events that were formed to reach out to young women in engineering.

“This club helps girls to know that there are more than just the two or three other girls in your classes [who] are in the same program as you,” Knight said. “It’s great to know that I’m not alone; that it’s OK to be a woman in engineering.”

According to the Student Organization’s office, this was a group of young women who just wanted support and camaraderie. They didn’t want to be alone in their field and this was a good way to branch out.

The Student Organization’s office tries not to duplicate any clubs with the same mission or purpose and the Student Organization Recognition Board looks to existing clubs, when they review applications.

Of the 17 clubs that correspond with engineering, there was one other club, the Society of Women Engineers, which was similar to Dailey’s club proposal for the Civil Ladies in Engineering.

Though there are no rules against women joining any of the other engineering clubs on campus, students like Dailey have seen these clubs as daunting with the amount of female participation being so small.

The Civil Ladies in Engineering club will be a place where girls looking to get involved in their program can see how they can be successful in a predominantly male-run field.