Women in engineering and computer science at DU making waves

Written by Henry Hargrave

Olivia “Oli” Hassan, a senior mechanical engineering major at the University of Denver, fondly remembers what first drew her into the engineering field.

“My middle school had engineering programs, including one for just girls,” Hassan said. “I joined it and was just good at it. It made sense to me and it was fun, so I just kept going at it. Then in high school I had a great engineering teacher who is still a mentor in my life today, and I was given a ton of opportunities to do projects and other stuff. It quickly became something I knew I wanted to do for a career.”

However, not all women have been as lucky as Hassan in having the chances to explore their passions and explore fields like STEM. Despite the fact that the number of women science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduates has exponentially increased over the past 25 years, the popularity of pursuing STEM degrees for women at the undergraduate level is still substantially lower than it is for men.

Many educators and STEM professionals agree that sparking an interest at a young age, especially in middle school and high school, is invaluable in increasing the chances that a young girl will become interested in engineering or computer science.

Traditionally, white men have dominated in the workforce in STEM roles for decades. The challenging and technical nature of these fields continue to draw many men into these fields, but in the past 10 years, there has been an uptick in the number of women pursuing careers in engineering and computer science. In 2016, over 200,000 women graduated with degrees in the STEM field compared to just over 140,000 in 2009.

In addition to growing participation rates among women in STEM, research suggests that female students’ achievement in science and mathematics is on par with their male peers, yet they are outpaced by men in the workforce.

Statistics like these are what drive so many initiatives in higher education and in the professional workforce for women to pursue careers in this field. Hassan is the president of the DU chapter of the Society of Women Engineers, which was founded in 1950 and serves as an outlet of support for women in what is often considered a hypermasculinized industry.

“Everyone mostly thinks of the image of a man sitting in a cubicle, sunglasses on, green screen flowing in front of him. I think on a local level we really need people encouraging women to pursue computer science programs, and just letting them know that it’s a viable option.”

DU Computer Science Major Bridget Poirer

In the DU chapter, Hassan works with the other officers to bring in guest speakers and host networking opportunities to “champion diversity in the engineering and technology professions” and “advocate for the inclusion and success of women, present and prospective, in engineering and technology.”

Though Hassan has received lots of support so far from faculty members, her family and the connections she’s made, she thinks as though sometimes being a woman in STEM feels like she’s meeting a quota. Hassan, who is also Cuban-American and identifies as a woman of color, is proud of what she has accomplished thus far, but also feels like sometimes she’s just used as a statistic to make people feel good about the growing diversity in her field.

“I think it’s definitely an internal struggle,” Hassan said. “I ask myself, ‘Am I here because I am good enough? Or am I here because I got the pity vote?’ It amazes me how much I’ve been able to accomplish in such a short amount of time, and it’s sometimes hard to believe that it’s on my own merit.”

Outside the Society of Women Engineers, the Ritchie School offers a number of other clubs and initiatives for students, including Tau Beta Pi, an engineering honor society, and the Grand Challenge Scholars (GCS) program, which is designed to revolutionize higher education in this field to prepare the next generation of engineers and computer scientists with the knowledge, skills, tools and mindset to solve global problems.

Hassan had the opportunity to travel to London last year to attend the Global Grand Challenges Summit and got to work with engineering students all over the world on the challenge of providing access to clean water.

“[The Ritchie School] paid for me to go to London, and this kind of international experience is something I never would have gotten otherwise,” Hassan said.

It’s no secret that engineering and computer science are among the most difficult undergraduate college majors and career paths that one can pursue. Other women entering the field, such as DU sophomore computer science major Bridget Poirier, got the inspiration to take on computer science from her dad who works in DevOps, a set of practices that combines software development with information technology (IT) operations.

“I’ve been around computers my whole life, as I suppose most people have in my generation,” Poirier said. “Then I joined the computer science program at my high school and soon, I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”

Poirier notes that most of her computer science courses have predominantly consisted of men and explained how that in a recent information packet sent out to students by the Ritchie School, statistics showed that only 23% of students across all four main undergraduate majors within the school (computer science, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and computer engineering) were women.

Because these fields are historically a boy’s club, Poirier believes that there needs to be a greater societal shift of what the general public believes a woman can and can’t do in order to truly close the gender gap and give women as many opportunities in STEM as possible.

“I think it’s really hard to change the perception of a study on a national or international scale,” Poirier explained.

“Everyone mostly thinks of the image of a man sitting in a cubicle, sunglasses on, green screen flowing in front of him. I think on a local level we really need people encouraging women to pursue computer science programs, and just letting them know that it’s a viable option.”

Though women, universities and non-profit STEM organizations have taken great strides in recent years to close the gender gap in engineering and computer science and create more opportunities than ever for more inclusion of underrepresented groups, it is clear that there is still much work to be done.

Growing up, Hassan’s father always told her to “fly above the weather” meaning don’t let any obstacles or negativity get in your way of pursuing your goals and working hard. This is exactly the kind of role model she wants to embody, and for young girls, seeing more women pursue these careers opens up new doors once never thought possible.