WSU Chapter of the Society of Women Engineers

Kelly Foster is president of the Society of Women Engineers chapter at Wayne State University

by Derrick Bean
College of Engineering
Public Affairs Writer

The National Society of Women Engineers (SWE) was founded in 1950, five years after the end of World War II. Troy Eller, the SWE archivist at Wayne State University’s Walter P. Reuther Library, is the go-to person for all things related to SWE’s history. She says there were 20 women engineering students who helped form a Wayne University section, separate from that of Detroit’s, on June 28, 1974.

Kelly Foster is the president of Wayne State’s SWE chapter today, and the mechanical engineering senior is carrying on tradition by laying the groundwork for the next generation. She is well aware of the countless women who worked for equality, making it easier for young women like herself to have a fighting chance.

Some people may believe SWE is not relevant today, but Foster says SWE continues to make a difference in the community, picking up where the group’s founders left off.

“There are plenty of women who have shown through example what it means to be a female engineer,” she says. “Those who have paved the road for female engineering students today have created an environment where females can feel comfortable in what used to be a male-dominated environment. We still have obstacles to overcome, but female engineers still have the passion that we had 59 years ago when SWE started.”

Eller, 27, says that while women engineers do not face the same level of hiring and on-the-job discrimination as they did many years ago, inequality still exists. Discrimination remains in schools where young girls are discouraged from studying math and science.

”And I think there are still issues such as work-life balance that SWE benefits not only women, but men,” says Eller, “where SWE and SWE members work with companies to work on childcare and family/elder care issues. Those are tasks frequently done by women, and sometimes men.”

Foster agrees. “The purpose of the organization is to provide support and resources to females pursuing a degree in engineering, math or science. SWE also provides outreach events and encouragement to younger girls interested in engineering… as well as supporting women engineers in every stage of their professional and personal lives.”

To know how far women engineers have come you have to know what they’ve been through, Eller says. Before WWII, there were very few women engineers. Women who wanted to be engineers had “trouble finding a college that would actually let them study engineering,” says Eller, who has a master’s degree from Wayne State in library and information science. “Many colleges were closed to women, and those that did admit women frequently discouraged or forbade them from engineering programs.”

As many men traded factory jobs for combat boots during the war, women stepped up. “The ‘manpower’ shortage created by the Second World War led companies to hire many more women to work as technical and engineering aides,” Eller says.

Job openings in turn became the key to education. Fast-forward to today, and you can see the change all across America. In 2009, Wayne State’s College of Engineering ranked 14 among 259 engineering schools in the nation in its percentage of women (30 percent) graduating with a bachelor’s degree, according to a 2009 survey by the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Prism Magazine.

Eller says SWE has contributed a lot to women and the labor movement since the national organization was founded. “It gave them a chance to get to know each other, share their stories. One of the benefits members have found in SWE, particularly from 1950 to 1980, was that early on, some employers absolutely refused to hire women. So when a woman engineer found an employer who did, they would tell their friends. It was through that networking that women would discover which employers would even look at them.”

SWE continues to open doors after all these years. Foster, 21, has risen to the top of the SWE-WSU ranks while at college. “SWE is a very important organization to me,” the 2nd-year president says. “I have been involved in it for about four years now. Through SWE, I have received many internship/job opportunities, scholarship opportunities and many lifelong friendships. The connections I have made through SWE with other female engineers around the country have been invaluable.”

Foster believes balancing work and school will pay off in the long run. “The technical skills I have learned through my engineering courses and the soft skills that I have learned through my involvement in SWE have definitely prepared me for the workforce,” she says.

Officers of the group meet monthly to discuss future plans, including increasing their membership. There are currently 20 members. The organization welcomes any WSU student, male or female, studying engineering, engineering technology, computer science, or math and science-related fields.

SWE-WSU is rightly proud of their new outreach program for high school students called “Future SWE!”  In 2008, SWE-WSU hosted this first annual event for approximately 40 high school girls at the new Danto Engineering Development Center “for a day filled with information and activities to encourage them to consider engineering as a career,” Foster says.

“The one thing younger girls have to understand is that engineering isn’t just for those who love math and science. If you love to be creative and have the drive to make the world a better place, then you have the passion it takes to be an engineer. You don’t have to love math and science – you just have to be able to do it.”

Eller says Future SWE! is the next big step. “I think that it really helps to have college-aged students talk to high school and middle school students,” she says. “I think they can better relate to younger students by having a SWE chapter at WSU that helps students get involved in science and math at an early age.”