(TNS) -- When Madeline Bull graduated from the petroleum engineering school at the University of Oklahoma last month she did so as the first female president of the OU chapter of Society of Petroleum Engineers. Women are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields across the board, but the tide is slowly changing.
Bull said she’s looking forward to becoming a role model for female engineers and wants to see more women go into STEM fields.
“It’s such a great job path,” Bull said. “Not only are you getting an incredible degree in four years that pays just as well as most graduate degrees pay, but it’s just fun. Problem solving in engineering is challenging and stimulating, and I really look forward to encouraging more women to become a part of it.”
Bull will start her career in Houston with Informage Energy in a few months. Unlike the majority of her female counterparts in the industry, she will be working as a field engineer. She said her experience at OU was extremely welcoming and her professional experience has been similar.
“Being in the field is a much different experience than maybe an office job as a petroleum engineer,” she said. “During the second interview process, they brief you on what being in the field is like. They even have the guys in the interview leave the room for a few minutes and they have one of their female employees come in and talk to us about her experience in the field. So, it feels like sometimes there are extra considerations.”
• Small gains and the big picture: According to U.S. Dept. of Labor statistics, women make up nearly half of the U.S. workforce, but account for a mere 14 percent of all engineers and 39 percent of chemists. From 2000 to 2009 the percentage of women in STEM fields remained constant at about 24 percent, while their share of all college-educated workers increased from 46 to 49 percent.
But efforts at the company and university level are starting to bear fruit.
Academic counselor Lance Goins said those numbers started on an upward trajectory at OU in the early 2000s. The number of women enrolled in engineering classes has jumped about 7 percent at OU in the last 10 years. About a quarter (24.3 percent) of all engineering students are women, compared to that national average of about 20 percent.
That’s a good start, but the goal is much higher.
“The goal as a college is to reach 50 percent,” Tiffany Smith, director of the newly created Women in Engineering Program said. “Our associate dean of academic affairs, John Antonio, this is something that he’s pushed, especially as we’ve developed the women in engineering program. Antonio himself has two daughters who both graduated with engineering degrees from the university of Oklahoma. We haven’t really put a timeline on that, because we know that there will have to be a lot of cultural shifting. But that’s the goal. We’re about halfway there.”
OU’s Women in Engineering Program will make its full-scale debut in the fall with a focus on outreach and recruitment. Smith said it will help the university continue to build on the progress of previous efforts.
“I do believe that support and changing the conversation and changing the image of what an engineer looks like, as well as the camps and other programs have led to a lot of growth,” Smith said. “A lot of research has been done on self efficacy on young women. One of the big challenges is having that self confidence. At the collegiate level, when someone makes a C in these challenging courses, they may think that this is not for me. We see a lot more with women that they will give up and move on, because they put so much pressure on themselves. We need to instill in them that it is a challenge for many people, including men. We need to continue to encourage them and show them how to deal with failure and that the end reward of overcoming those challenges and obtaining an engineering degree is worth it.”
Smith said it opens a lot of doors for women, but represents a net gain for society and the sciences.
“I think part of changing the conversation is changing what an engineer looks like. Still, to this day you can Google ‘engineer’ and you’ll get a man in a construction hat or a train driver. Seriously, that’s what you find. So, that shows why there are so many groups trying to change the image of what an engineer does and what they look like. Women can improve society and make a difference and change our world.”
OU chemistry professor Dr. Donna Nelson is that kind of woman.
She serves as the President of the American Chemical Society — the largest scientific society in the world — and holds the honor of many firsts for women in the field of chemistry. She also collected the Nelson Diversity Surveys — a collection of data sets that tracks the representation of women and minorities in science and engineering.
She said it hasn’t been an easy road for women in the sciences, but over the last 30 years, she said she has seen the seeds of change begin to sprout.
“I think it’s pretty well known that there have been barriers for women,” Nelson said. “And things have changed. When I was first hired in 1983, I was the first tenure-track woman ever hired into the chemistry department. Things have changed so much. I can remember when I took my physics classes as an undergraduate, I was the only woman and the classes were quite large, more than 100 students.
“There have been many times that I was the only or first woman to do something or another. And as you go along in time, more women appeared. Things are changing, but it sadly does take time.”
She said she never had any self doubts. She had the highest grades and a high drive and she said that’s what it takes. That and knowing how to recognize who is looking out for you and who is looking to sabotage you.
“It was sort of a maze, trying to find your way through,” she said. “Sometimes you would run into people that would treat you fairly and sometimes you would run into people who helped you. Sometimes you ran into people who held you back.”
• The deeper impact: Some people may wonder why it’s such a priority to encourage women to go into STEM fields. Nelson said it’s important to encourage women, but it goes deeper than that.
“If we just say that we include women, then a lot of people might not understand why,” she said. “They might not realize that it’s for the benefit of everybody. Sometimes when we solve problems, it can take a battery of people with their individual talents and skills to apply to that problem. We need as many minds as possible to apply to whatever problem there is as it comes up.
“I think the goal itself is to ensure that our entire population can be drawn upon for the benefit of our country. We don’t want to shoot ourselves in the foot as a nation of people. So, if we say that we’re going to exclude part of our talent, whether it’s women, or blacks, or hispanics, or whatever minority category, for whatever reason, we would be disadvantaging ourselves as a nation. We need to make sure that our entire population can achieve their full potential and do whatever they want to do. We don’t want to hold anybody back.
Nelson said that she is optimistic about women’s future in STEM fields, but said the playing field is still slanted. Especially at the top.
“Women who are older and have had more experience in dealing with these things and look more at the top — leadership levels — and the next goals for them, they’ll say that more changes need to be made. Those are the levels where there aren’t many women,” Nelson said.
“When I talk to women at lower levels and they say ‘I don’t see a problem,’ I say ‘wait until you get to a higher level, because that’s where the differences are greater.’ I don’t see a disagreement, they just have different perspectives. I understand that.”
Nelson said that women fought many battles in the past that paved the way for the future.
“There have been a lot of changes and a lot of progress, because a lot of women worked for it,” Nelson said. “And I’m very encouraged by it. I think that things are going to go very well for women. Everyone is attentive to this and talking about it and I think things are going to continue to get better.”
OU medical school and Norman North alum Nicki Nabavizadeh said the next generation has to continue the fight.
“As a woman you kind of want to prove your role more,” she said. “I think that’s something you do to yourself personally. I wanted to prove to everybody that I was just as capable as my male counterparts. I think the expectations were the same, but maybe your personal expectations change. You personally want to feel that you are as strong as your male counterpart.”
She said it comes down to setting an example. Her brother was hers. Before she went to study environmental engineering for her undergraduate degree at OU, she said he shared the joy of science with her.
“That’s where having a good role model pushed me,” she said. “Having someone to really make you feel like you can do whatever you want, he was always really good at that. His encouragement was really empowering.”
By empowering the women of the future, young female scientists and engineers are hoping to continue the work of trailblazers like Nelson. Not just for the sake of women, but for the sake of a better world.
“It’s sort of like the old saying ‘two heads are better than one,’” Nelson said. “We don’t want to exclude anyone, because the person we exclude may be the one we need to solve the problem.”
Mack Burke
mburke@normantranscript.com
Follow @mackburke4
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