Women in Enginering

Distinctive Women Alumnae Though women are still in the minority in civil engineering, their numbers have increased over the years. In 1975, women still earned less than 2.5 percent of engineering degrees awarded in the United States; in 2001 that figure was higher than 20 percent, according to the National Academy of Engineering. Still, of civil engineers working in America today, only about 9 percent are women, according to a 2001 report by the National Science Foundation. Those who have achieved positions of leadership in the field represent an even more elite group; just 1 to 2 percent, according to some estimates. The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering has about 12,000 living alumni; of these about 1,000 are women. On the following pages, we present just a few of these talented women working in civil and environmental engineering today. Some are in leadership roles of some kind, while others are just starting out. All have distinguished themselves in some way, and the department is proud to claim them as alumni of CEE.
Doris Willmer		“What was hard for me was not having any real female role models—they just weren’t there—and having to be persistent in the face of that. That was sometimes hard, not knowing whether it was just a bad day in engineering or if I was just not cut out for it. There was always that weighing going on in my mind. Should I keep doing this? This is hard. I’m not getting any support. Why am I doing this? The only thing that drove me was that I wanted to be an engineer.” More...
Nancy Brooks		What did you love about engineering? “Problem-solving--the ability to do it and do it well and come up with unique and innovative ways of solving problems. I’m a consummate problem-solver.” More...
Virginia Holtzman-Bell		“An engineering career gives you a sense of cause and effect that so much of the world doesn’t have. When I left the Academy, I came out to Juneau to become the executive officer of the civil engineering unit here. The Coast Guard had launched something called Total Quality Management (TQM), and they sent me to a week-long class in it. I was just horrified that I had to sit a week in this class, because I very quickly realized that the whole point of TQM was to get the rest of the world to think like engineers.” More...
Eleanor Blackmon		“We have a very technologically illiterate public, and we as the engineering community need to make the effort to take all the little teaching moments we get to explain how technology works. Not in an overwhelming way, but just with little sound bites of information so that people understand that this infrastructure exists, that their lifestyle is dependent on it, and how much money it takes to keep it going.” More...
Katie Willenborg		“I came from a really small high school,” she says. “My graduating class was only 42 people. I was definitely involved in anything we had available, mostly as a social outlet, but also because it took the whole class to be involved in something to make things run!” “I definitely think that no matter what I do, I’m always going to be working to do better.” More...
Katie Zimmerman		“I don’t think that any special challenges I’ve faced have been because of other people. I think it’s been an internal thing. And I’ve heard this from other women. We feel like we need to prove ourselves. We feel that we need to be not just good but the best. We may try to over-achieve a bit just to make an impression on people.” More...
Dolly Marsh Gurrola		Dolly Marsh Gurrola (MS 55) earned her master’s degree at a time when most people were still astonished to encounter a female engineer. She still recalls the surprise of a male engineering student who turned to her on the first day of class and asked, “What are you doing here?” When she passed the difficult exam to become a licensed structural engineer in the state of California in 1962, she became only the second woman ever to do so. Still, she is a reluctant role model. “I’ve worked in jobs that fit me, and I’ve never thought of myself as breaking any barriers.” More...
Sarah Lowe		“I’ve always been one to kind of carve my own path.” “I think women who go into engineering are naturally independent, we’re natural leaders, so while we might notice that we are in the minority population, we don’t let it bother us.” More...
Qilin Li		“I guess a lot of women are scared thinking about the word ‘engineering.’ They think about a lot of field trips, a lot of labor-intensive work. Because of the development of technology, there are a lot of things women can do very comfortably in the lab. ... We need to let women know that you don’t have to be physically very strong in order to be an engineer, and you don’t have to be super-aggressive to be an engineer.” More...
Spring Keisel		“I had a teacher [at junior college] who didn’t think women should be in engineering. At first, I’d get my test back and I’d have seven points off for a negative sign, and the guy next to me would have one point off for the same mistake. But the other girl and I had the highest grades in the class, regardless, for the first semester. By the time the third semester rolled around, my tests got graded more fairly. So eventually they’ll figure it out—that you’re capable—if you just keep doing it.” More...