Walking into an engineering lab often feels like walking into an eighth-grade dance. The few women cluster together, while the swarm of men stay off to their side. The classroom's DJ is almost always male, and usually the women leave first.
Drop-out numbers for women in the Pratt School of Engineering are lower than the national average of 40 percent and have shown a downward trend. Less than 15 percent of Pratt's Class of 2005 have transferred to Trinity College of Arts and Sciences. The school's male and female drop-out rates are about equal, but women still cite struggles.
"It is just expected for us to drop out, so a lot of women just give up and feel like it is no big deal for them to do so since it is already expected of them," wrote Pratt sophomore Katie Page in an e-mail.
A recent study conducted by the Goodman Research Group Inc. found that most women who drop out of engineering do so not for academic reasons, but linked female students' likelihood of completing an engineering degree with the presence of "strong social support networks within the engineering field."
Senior Lauren DeBoever, who transferred out of Pratt her sophomore year, said Pratt lacks such a network.
"Pratt cares for the academic life of the student; Trinity cares for the student," DeBoever said. "If Pratt maintained a more supportive environment, with professors who cared about their students as well as their students' performance, more women would stay."
Important support elements mentioned in the study include mentor programs, opportunities to network with practicing female engineers and organizations like the Society for Women Engineers, a club that Pratt offers.
"It takes a lot to earn full respect from both our peers and our professors, and constantly working hard just to be equal can be exhausting," said Pratt junior Colleen Nolan. "Duke also has a fairly Southern point of view on women. I have had multiple guys ask me why I stay in engineering when I could do something easier and then find a husband at school."
Of the 39 students who transferred from Pratt this spring, 11--or 28 percent--were women. Twenty-nine percent of the rising sophomore class is female. Last year, 10 of the 45 transfer students were women.
Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Material Sciences Phil Jones, who approves transfers between Pratt and Trinity, attributed the increased retention rate to the introduction of Engineering 10, an elective surveying fields of engineering, as well as Trinity's adoption of Curriculum 2000.
"I think some of our first-year classes are not so relevant to what we actually plan to study, and that causes many to feel like engineering isn't quite what they were expecting, so they drop early on," Page wrote. "I decided to put off physics until this summer so that I could take engineering classes and decide [whether to transfer] after taking some good classes. Unfortunately not many take the route I chose and will probably drop."
Pratt sophomore Lauren Colgrove said more female faculty would promote a more supportive environment.
"All students project themselves onto the role models available for them, so for female students, it is advantageous to have women in positions of success around them," said Lori Setton, assistant professor of biomedical engineering. "It gives them an opportunity to imagine themselves as successful individuals."
Of Pratt's 72 tenure-track faculty, five are women, said Pratt School of Engineering Dean Kristina Johnson. However, Johnson hired five more women this year, including Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Chair April Brown.
"We did that, and now we should have a new goal. Maybe double it again?" Johnson said.
The proportion of female faculty members is far lower than in Trinity, but the low number of women in engineering as a profession limits hiring options, said Leslie Collins, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering.
"It's hard for the make-up of Pratt to do a whole lot more than reflect the make-up of engineering in general," she said. "This is probably a very unique university in that my department chair, dean and president are women. There is sensitivity to female issues all the way through the chain."
Pratt has one of the highest percentages of female students in the nation, behind only the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Johnson said. Nationally, 20 percent of engineering students are female.
Setton said a more personal advising system, which Pratt is currently considering, could also help support women.
"It is something that could really have the opportunity to improve things as, uniquely, female students seek more one-on-one time with faculty to feel they are in a more supportive environment," she said.
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