Female high schoolers targeted for math, science degrees by NJ colleges
Posted Thursday, August 20, 2009 from The Star-Ledger

Female high schoolers targeted for math, science degrees by N.J. colleges

by Karen Keller/The Star-Ledger

Thursday August 20, 2009, 7:58 AM

MIDDLESEX COUNTY -- New Jersey colleges are intensifying efforts tointerest more girls in engineering, physics, computer science andphysics careers, offering girls-only programs in early high school,mentorship opportunities and networking groups.

The effort to roll out the red carpet for women into math, scienceand engineering labs isn't new, and in recent decades there has beenclear progress: Women today account for more than half the students atsome medical schools and in the biological and environmental sciences.

Noah K. Murray/The Star-LedgerTiannaSpencer works on a Space Invader ride with Karen Shnulevich and ShannonBrady as aprt of a class at Middlesex County College called"TechXporation" that teaches high school girls going into sophomoreyear how to design and engineer amusement park rides.

But men still far outnumber women in math-heavy careers, college administrators and teachers said.

"We're wasting 50 percent of our brainpower," said Josephine Lamela,67, physics professor at Middlesex County College. "The world hasevolved into a high-tech world and we need a trained workforce."

At Rutgers this fall, the university is opening theRosalind-Franklin House, a second all-women's dorm for math andscience-related majors. The first such dorm, Bunting-Cobb, opened in1989 and was the first of its kind in the nation.

The ratio of women at Rutgers earning a degree of any level in math,science or engineering, rose from 31 percent in 1989, to 36 percent in2008.

"It's like a Catch-22. We're doing really well in the biologicalsciences but in the physical sciences, we're not where we need to be,"said Regina Riccioni, director of Rutgers University's The DouglassProject for Women in Math, Science & Engineering, created in 1987.

At Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, a group ofresearchers won a $2.5 million National Science Foundation grant inApril to help 30 universities nationwide recruit females into scienceand math careers.

At NJIT in Newark, which specializes in technical careers, theMurray Center for Women in Technology is in its second year of a newnetworking program to help retain female freshmen. Of NJIT's 8,200students, a quarter are female, she said.

Noah K. Murray/The Star-LedgerRumshaAkhtar tests wheel adjustments made to the Juggler roller coaster.Twenty-five Middlesex County female high school students have designedand created amusement park rides, as part of a National ScienceFoundation grant to encourage girls to study math and science

Programs run by the Murray Center include sleepover nights for girlsin high school. The girls spend a night with a female student at thecollege, sleeping on blow-up mattress, and attending the student'sclasses the next day, said Talina Knox, assistant director of thecenter, created in 1995.

At Middlesex County College, a $196,000 National Science Foundationgrant is in its fourth year, offering a free class called"TechXploration" that teaches girls going into their sophomore year ofhigh school how to design and engineer amusement park rides.

Earlier this month as the girls put finishing touches on theirmechanized projects, several said they liked the no-boys rule. Boys canbe competitive and domineering in science class, they said.

"Here, it's just girls," Subhashini Chandrasekaran, 15, of Edison, "so you can actually do stuff."

The class has produced results, said Lamela, one of the class's twoteachers. Half the girls who took the class three years ago and are nowstarting college have chosen technical careers, she said.

Nationwide, roughly 30 percent of PhD's in mathematical sciences areawarded to women compared with 5 percent in the 1950's, according toJanet Mertz, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and co-author ofthe June study "Gender, Culture, and Mathematics Performance."

But while that may sound like a success, today's figure isn't a lothigher than the period between 1890 and World War II, when 15 to 20percent of top math degrees went to women, Mertz said. After the warwomen were told to give up their "Rosie the Riveter" jobs doing "men'swork'"to returning veterans ,and the volume of women continuing inthese jobs and pursuing degrees in math plummeted.

Joan Bennett, director of Rutgers' Office for the Promotion of Womenin Science, Engineering and Mathematics, created in 2006, said hiringmore women to teach in the math and science departments is the key toequalizing the gender scale. They're better mentors to young women, shesaid.

"Women don't have any trouble understanding other women haveambition," said Bennett, who credits her early interest in botany to aGirl Scout leader. The Web site of Bennett's office lists '"girl geek"profiles, or the resumes and personal stories of female Rutgersprofessors in math, science and engineering.

Rutgers' Chemistry department is one of the university's sucesses interms of ratio of female staff, with 41 women, or a quarter of thedepartment, catapulting Rutgers to first in the nation in thatdiscipline, a tie with the University of California at Los Angeles,Bennett said.

But the university's Math, Physics & Astronomy and Statisticsdepartments fall into the five-to-10 percent range, and ComputerScience is the lowest, at 2.6 percent female faculty, compared with13.2 percent average nationwide, university statistics show.

Bennett's "girl geek" profile shows a black-and-white photo of heras a freshman at Upsala College in East Orange. She's sitting relaxedon her dorm-room bed, legs and feet bare, her blonde hair in theshoulder-length style fashionable in 1961.

She said she thought by now there would be a lot more women in herfield. "I'm surprised and disappointed there hasn't been more," Bennettsaid. "I thought it would be better by now."

Noah K. Murray/The Star-LedgerTarjMehta adds plastic riders to the Juggler roller ride. Twenty-fiveMiddlesex County female high school students have designed and createdamusement park rides, as part of a National Science Foundation grant toencourage girls to study math and science.