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Georgia Tech is a unit of the University System of Georgia.

Women at Tech mark a golden anniversary

David Terraso
Institute Communications and Public Affairs

When Elizabeth Herndon and Diane Michel strode onto campus in 1952 as the first female students, they had no idea of the events they would set in motion.

“To think I thought I wouldn’t be noticed, that I’d just sneak in,” Herndon said with a laugh.

Not only were they noticed, but their numbers quickly grew. In just 50 years, Tech has gone from having just two women students to producing more female engineers than any other university in the country.

“Other schools have been admitting females longer than Georgia Tech, but I don’t think they’ve made the concerted effort that Tech has,” said Mary Frank Fox, professor in the Ivan Allen College and co-director of the Center for the Study of Women, Science and Technology.

For the 2002 fall semester, 2,045 women were enrolled as engineering majors at Tech, compared to 1,773 at the University of Michigan and 1,285 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Ironically, MIT began admitting female students in 1883, five years before Tech, then known as the Georgia School of Technology, opened its doors. It wasn’t until 1968 that the Regents voted to allow women to enroll in all programs at Tech.

“We didn’t go there to change Georgia Tech. We went there for an education,” explained Shirley Mewborn, one of two first students to get a degree from Tech and the first female president of the Alumni Association.

But whether they meant to or not, their presence set in motion a complete overhaul of science and technology education in Georgia, and opened the doors for more women to enter the traditionally male dominated fields of science and engineering.

The diversity of backgrounds and ideas that women students and faculty have brought have been extremely important to the quality of education at Tech, said Sue Rosser, dean of the Ivan Allen College and Tech’s first female academic dean.

“Women faculty and students often have a different perspective on problems. They often are much more interested in the social applications that a particular technology will have. Given all the amazing technological problems that need to be solved, we need to have people with as much creativity, with as many different backgrounds as possible working on these solutions,” she said.

Part of the success Tech has had in recruiting women into engineering can be chalked up to its Women in Engineering program (WIE), currently run by civil and environmental engineering professor Mimi Philobos. WIE seeks to recruit female engineers and provide them opportunities for professional growth and development.

“We have a technological society, and we have a shortage of women in the tech professions. If we want to be competitive in a global marketplace, we cannot afford to overlook the talents of half of our population,” said Philobos.

Tech’s Center for the Study of Women in Science and Technology is another way Tech is meeting the needs of women both on and off campus. The Center offers a minor in gender studies as well as programs aimed at female students who are entering fields in science and technology.

But a university also has to meet the needs of the female faculty, too. Through the ADVANCE program, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Tech is working to increase the representation of women both in academia and in industry. Jane Ammons is one of four ADVANCE professors and has been at Tech as a student since 1976. As one of Tech’s first female professors of engineering, she’s seen first hand how the Institute has changed through the years from a place that merely tolerated female faculty to a university that actively seeks to recruit and advance them. One of her fondest memories, she said, is fighting to get a woman’s restroom put in her academic building in the late 1970’s.

“I jumped into the fray with an industrial engineering study based on the numbers of males and females in the building. Making my logical engineering arguments, I approached key administrators at Tech,” she said, “with no luck.”

Knowing a complaint to the U.S. Department of Justice could withhold federal funding to Tech, she made one last stop at the vice president’s office.

“Instead of simply changing the sign on the door, which was my request, he found the money to renovate the building and add a larger women’s restroom. For the remainder of our time in that building, the women secretaries and students threatened to put up a plaque in the bathroom.”

Whatever changes Tech makes over the next 50 years, Rosser said, they will all meet the same high standards the women of the past 50 years have worked so hard to meet.

“We were just students. We weren’t looking behind or ahead. We were just looking to get out, if you will,” explained Mewborn. “Today, I see the accomplishments of so many of our women students and what they have meant to science and technology. I'm just so happy to see the contributions that women have made. I guess had we not started this, then it wouldn't have happened, so that makes me very proud.”

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