“When I was a kid, I had no idea what engineering was,” Galliers said. “I didn’t decide my major until I was a senior in high school. It was because I took auto mechanics class. I just wanted to see how to change my oil and stuff, and an engineer who worked on airplanes came in and talked. I thought it sounded really cool so I thought I’d try that.”

With MSU’s College of Engineering recently reaching more than 1,000 women enrolled, 20 percent of the total, students and faculty are focusing on how to keep the trend going in college and in the workplace.

Starting young

Daina Briedis, a chemical engineering professor, said she thinks the best way to get more women in the field is to involve students at a young age.

“It has to go down further, like into elementary or middle school, where girls are involved in classes that talk about not just science and math, but also engineering,” Breidis said. “So young girls start establishing a self-identity in third or fourth or fifth grade, where they think, ‘yes I can do this stuff, and it’s called engineering,’ they’re more likely to consider that as an avenue for study.” Society of Women Engineers tries to do just that. SWE, a student organization of about 100 members, focuses on professional development and outreach efforts.

Chemical engineering senior Nicole Traitses is president of the organization. She said one of their main successful events is Wow! That's Engineering!, an outreach program in the Lansing area.

Mechanical engineering junior Melissa Oudeh is a part of the efforts. She said she thinks that involving kids at a younger age and teaching them what engineering is will help increase the number of women in the field later on.

“We go to STEM schools in Lansing,” Oudeh said. “We talk to fourth and fifth grade kids about engineering. They’ve got a really good split between male and female. I think just getting people involved younger. I was never as exposed to engineering when I was young, so I think it would be good (for them).”

SWE spends their time at these schools telling the younger students about each engineering field, then doing activities such as the marshmallow challenge, building DNA structures out of candy or building bridges and structures out of newspaper.

Briedis said another successful way to involve younger girls in engineering is to have role models that are engineers. She said if girls and boys have someone close to them in engineering, they are more likely to consider that as a viable career option.

This is true for Oudeh. She said her sister graduated from the College of Engineering in 2014, and she would not have even considered engineering if it wasn’t for her sister.

“It’s surprising because I feel like I didn’t even know what engineering was until I was in high school and my sister decided to go into it," she said. "It’s impressive that these fourth and fifth graders have knowledge of what engineers do and know people who are engineers.”

Closing the classroom gap

Though the overall college is at 20 percent females, each department’s numbers vary from eight percent in computer engineering to to 52.6 percent in biosystems engineering.

Traitses said she thinks the ratio in the classroom is about five-to-one.

“You definitely notice it,” Traitses said. “It can be hard to get your word out there, but you just have to be confident and be who you are.”

Oudeh said she thinks women are typically the minority in classes, but it changes based on classes. Still, it doesn’t bother her.

“I’ve never felt uncomfortable with the ratio,” she said. “I think it’s fine.”

Still, Briedis will take certain measures to make sure to treat everyone equally in her classroom, particularly in group settings.

“In groups, we have students learning to work in teams,” Briedis said. “I don’t ever assign teams so that women are outnumbered and that’s supposed to be helpful. I think maybe things are changing now, but I think maybe five years ago if a woman was the only one on a team, I think often times she would get assigned to be the report writer rather than doing the hands-on work in a laboratory. So when women are not outnumbered, that is less likely to happen.”

The field isn’t always as even as the classroom. Female students with experience through internships said they have always been a part of a very small minority.

Oudeh said though there were several women employed when she worked over the summer, she was the only female engineering intern at her job.

One student, who preferred not to be named, worked as an intern for an engineering company for two summers. She said her first summer there she was the only female intern, and felt at first she was looked at differently for being a woman. However, once they got to know her, she felt more welcome.

“I did notice when I first entered my internship my first year, I was maybe questioned a little bit by some of the guys in the shop,” she said. “But once they got to know me and knew I was a hard worker, I fit in just fine. I was like part of the family. I felt like maybe I was looked at more closely because I was a female, but it wasn’t an issue a week or two in. Once people saw who I was, it was fine.”

Changing the conversation

For Judy Cordes, director for student success for the Women in Engineering Program, increasing the amount of women in engineering will take a change in perspective.

“It’s more getting people to realize when engineers do,” Cordes said. “When you talk about being a doctor, you talk about saving lives, changing the world, influencing the health of people. But when you talk about being an engineer you talk about being good at math and science. You don’t talk about what an engineer does — they change the world, too.”

Briedis said when she first joined the field, women didn’t have role models showing them that engineering can appeal to feminine traits too.

“Women also have a particular bend toward the nurturing kinds of things, like doing things that serve mankind, whether it’s medicine or biomedical engineering (for example),” Briedis said. “But really if you think about engineering in general, that’s what engineering does in general. It’s not all focused towards human, or animal, or veterinary medicine, but most everything engineers design does benefit society.”

Cordes said by changing the way engineering is seen by both women and men, more will find it appealing.

“Almost anything you touch in a given day is designed or developed or influenced by an engineer,” Cordes said. “So those are the ways that women will respond, if they know that their career choices can help people, that’s what they want to hear. They don’t want to hear they have to be good at math and science. It’s appealing to the way they want to see their career choice. (We’re) changing the conversation.”