Syracuse University has been working the past few years to combat the under-representation of women in the sciences and engineering in the educational and professional realms.

In 1999 the university developed the Women in Science and Engineering Program in hopes to improve the academic climate for women in engineering and the sciences.

‘The idea is to have activities and programs that help (female students) feel more connected to each other, their majors and their future,’ said Corri Zoli, a post-doctoral student in the L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science.

According to the 2004 WISE report, women undergraduate students comprise 18.5 percent of the undergraduate engineering population nationally, whereas men comprise 81.5 percent. WISE initiatives began on the national level in the late 1980s.

The report identifies barriers women face in science and engineering fields, including: cultural conditioning and gender stereotyping that identifies scientists and engineers as male, isolation, lack of role models and peer support, learning environments that privilege male models of learning, interacting and communicating and gender biases in the classroom and work place.

‘We need to think about: Is this really what we value in our society?’ Zoli said. ‘Our

media doesn’t show that. There is a cultural stereotype and girls think it is weird or

abnormal to get into these fields. And it’s not a question of aptitude for men.’

Bhatia said for women who are good in math and science it is natural to get into these fields, but many women want to enter a career where they can make a difference.

‘But this career is not glamorous,’ Bhatia said.

WISE has three parts to its program: actively recruiting women faculty into the sciences and engineering, establishing a university-wide lecture series by women scientists and engineers and developing an undergraduate WISE learning community and mentoring program.

When the organization hosts lectures they often have high school students attend to help encourage women to get involved in these fields early, said Shobha Bhatia, director of WISE.

‘What you really do is invigorate the whole community,’ Zoli said.

Marina Artuso, an associate physics professor, said people decide early on in life what subjects they are interested in and it is more difficult to become interested in something new later on in life.

‘The earlier kids get into the sciences the better it is,’ Artuso said. ‘We are wasting resources by forcing women into stereotypical roles.’

The WISE learning community, currently on the second floor of Shaw Hall, began in 2000 and aims to create a supportive environment for women in these fields.

‘The learning community provides an environment where people of common interest can support each other and learn together,’ Artuso said.

Bhatia said some of the benefits of this aspect of WISE are group meetings the students participate in, tutoring programs, seminars on learning how to budget their time, approach faculty, dress for job interviews and educational and social field trips.

‘They need to feel when there are challenges they are not the only ones,’ Zoli said.

‘Walking into a field with a minority status is a scary thought. It can be isolating and alienating.’

Kerry Smith, a freshman bioengineering major, said her experience living in the WISE community has been going very well.

‘It has helped a lot,’ Smith said. ‘I have class with a lot of the girls and we can do homework and study together.’

There are a very small percentage of women in WISE in relation to women in these majors, despite the benefits of joining, Bhatia said.

‘Learning communities are not for everybody,’ Bhatia said. ‘We are very proud of what is happening with that group of students,’ Bhatia said.

Fern Langham, a freshman biomedical engineering major, said she initially joined the WISE learning community to be with people of similar interests in order to form study groups but was not completely satisfied with her experience and ended up moving out.

‘It was the same people in my classes so I already had a connection with them anyway,’ Langham said.

Langham also said she felt the floor was very dull and unenthusiastic. Her suggestion for improving the learning community would be to make it co-educational.

Bhatia said an idea is in the works currently for an engineering learning community that would perhaps be in the same building as the WISE learning community, and there would be some overlapping of activities between the two groups.

‘Women are an entry point to making the university better around these issues,’ Zoli said.

Published on March 21, 2005 at 12:00 pm