IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2008 - 16

demanding atmosphere, with the
prospect of ultimately gaining a stressful
job of questionable permanence. What
will help us most is not to say that this
ain't so, but to make it so that it ain't.

A Change of Course
We have put enough money and effort
into ads and Web sites. We have a cabinet
full of trend studies that made very little
difference and lists upon lists of unhelpful tips from carefully written dissertations and long observational treatises. It
is time to change direction.
Here are two ideas to start the
process: whether we like it or not, the
current engineering curriculum has
demonstrated itself to be strongly oriented toward males. As unfashionable
and unseemly as it may sound, the time
may have come to try consciously to
develop an engineering curriculum
aimed deliberately at young women.
This may sound heretical. However,
when everything else fails (and I would
argue that everything else has indeed
failed), it may be time to address the
curriculum problem directly rather than
ignore it and try to hide it in glitzy propaganda campaigns (which women do not
fall for anyway). One likely outcome may
be that this new reengineered curriculum would also appeal to many talented
men who are repelled by the same deficiencies of the current curriculum that
have driven most women away.
Second, we need to work with industry and experts in occupational choices,
labor, economy, psychology, and popular
culture to develop new engineering
workplace models. These models would
be designed to be in better harmony with
the tastes, sensitivities, lifestyle, and family obligations of the modern, educated
middle-class woman.

Out of Style?
I realize this too may sound a bit out of
style; after all, we are supposed to enjoy
full equality and exhibit unquestionable
sameness by now. However, the reality is
that with women accounting for only
10% of engineers, the engineering workplace is anything but equal. In other professions and occupations the workplace

IEEE WOMEN IN ENGINEERING MAGAZINE

evolution has occurred naturally, shaped
by market forces and social pressures. In
engineering we may have to give it a little push.
If we (professional organizations, federal funding agencies, research institutions, colleges and universities, the
engineering industry) insist on trying
again and again the same formulas, studies, and campaigns that have disappointed us for 30 years, we are certain to get
exactly the same unsatisfactory results.
In that case it would be much more practical to acknowledge that engineering is
for men only, and move on to the next
problem.
This article first appeared in the
November 2005 issue of The Interface, a
joint publication of the IEEE Education
Society and the ASEE Electrical and
Computer Engineering Division.
-Moshe Kam is vice president of IEEE
Educational Activities and the dean of the
Engineering School at Drexel University in
Philadelphia.

Be All You Can Be
Practice continous learning-
and learn by teaching

"Hi! How are you? Where have you
been?" I remember the good old days in
high school, when girls ruled! If memory
serves me right, until high school years,
girls outperformed boys in math and science. After graduation, we were on our
own merry way into an exciting future.
Some of us committed our lives to a high
school sweetheart or to a new love. Others joined the workforce. Many went
straight to college; the school of life had
taught us that earning a college degree
could double lifetime earnings.
Whichever path we choose, we
encountered hurdles. Although neither
identity loss nor the "glass ceiling" manifests itself in female college student life,
colleges' admission policy can be an
obstacle. It controls the proportion of
female population in college, as Alex
Kingsbury reported in his article "College Admission: Tough Times for Girls?"

SUMMER 2008

in U.S. News & World Report, August 17,
2007. The reason that girls are admitted
at a lower rate than boys is plain and
simple. It is for the sake of gender balancing, which means that securing dorm
space for girls is highly competitive. The
more girls go to college, the lower the
admission rate for girls becomes.

The Language of Silence
Too many women in too many countries
speak the same language of silence. We
are persuaded, pushed, perhaps hardwired into the stereotypical model of
"girls." We simply accept the mentality
as if it were written in stone. We are
praised when we follow the herd, and we
are subjected to cold shoulders, at best,
when we do not. It is convenient to just
follow the crowd. Isn't there safety numbers? Not in this case, if you ask me. To
break down the code of such conduct
becomes a challenge.
IEEE's Women in Engineering affinity group lends us a hand. It offers a synergy boost from a unified group of
engineers of all ages, races, and
complexions. With our
mutual support, not
only is silence but also
the glass ceiling is
pushed away, one chip
at a time.
I wasn't born into
academia, and I am
Norparut
neither an engineer
Vanitchanant leads a
nor a researcher. I am
WIE task force.
merely a professional
student. I just enjoy learning, though I
didn't realize the fact until after my first
college graduation. "No one is too old to
learn," my grandfather once said.
One of the best ways to learn is to
teach. Whether in a classroom setting or
not, I apply my classroom teaching philosophy (see "My Teaching Statement")
to my students, some of whom don't
even know that they are my students.
While they are learning, I learn with
them, and sometimes from them.
I strongly believe in the principles of
the Science, Technology, Engineering,
and Mathematics (STEM) Education
Coalition, which offers one of the best
venues I have ever known. The coalition

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