Female Engineers at Dartmouth

Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering has made history with more female than male engineering graduates. And that is momentous indeed!

While it’s a well known fact that there are more females than males on college campuses these days, what is also a well known fact is that there remain more males than females in college engineering departments. It’s a gender gap and it’s one that is significant across American college campuses. But at Dartmouth College, the Thayer School of Engineering has made history by defying this national trend.

As announced by the Thayer School of Engineering, “Dartmouth College granted 54% of its undergraduate engineering degrees to women this week, making it the first national research university to award more bachelor’s degrees in engineering to women than men. Nationally, the proportion of women earning undergraduate degrees in engineering averages 19 percent, according to data from the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). ‘By thinking creatively about the content, context, and delivery of engineering education, Dartmouth has achieved a milestone,’ said Norman Fortenberry, executive director of the ASEE. ‘Other engineering colleges must now match this achievement.'”

More than half of Dartmouth’s engineering students are women, a stark contrast to national trends.

And the turn in the tide isn’t only significant at Dartmouth. It’s a historic milestone indeed. Over the last decade, only 19% of Americans graduating with an undergraduate degree in engineering have been females. Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering is swimming against the national currents and succeeding. We salute Dartmouth College on these historic numbers — 54% female! — and hope that one day soon, gender parity in engineering will be so ordinary that it won’t be newsworthy.