Author: College of Engineering

Ralph and Jeannie Kummler and their granddaughter Mackenzie at the 2009 Night of the Stars. Photo by Alonso Del Arte.

This is THE most difficult note I’ve ever written.

Jeannie Kummler

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.”

The committee, headed by Congressman John Conyers, is investigating the affect of concussions on National Football League (NFL) players with an eye to improve its rules and helmets. Their real interest is to protect amateur youth players in college, high school and middle school, says Albert King. Those players and organizations look up to the NFL as their role model.

King did not testify, but you can say he was an interested observer. As chair of the Biomedical Engineering Department and former director of the Bioengineering Center, King and Wayne State have been at the forefront of head injury research in the country. It has studied head injuries for decades and has either led or been involved with the medical school in more than a few NFL-supported research studies.

The NFL is under scrutiny by Conyers and Congress as former players clamor for changes in the game rules. An increasing number of retired players are being diagnosed with dementia, disabilities and even early deaths due to brain injuries.

While the Wayne State studies commissioned by the NFL over the years studied concussions and the dynamics of the players’ head injuries, King said he was never able to persuade the NFL to study the helmets to make improvements.

Congress is fighting back by “trying to beat up on the NFL for not paying enough attention to the effects of repeat-concussions these football players are having,” King says. In the past, the NFL has rested on claims by its Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee that there is no solid scientific evidence linking repeated concussions and brain injury symptoms cropping up in later life. But the key question posed by Conyers at the hearing at Wayne State is not whether the dots can be connected, King says, but ‘Why, with the mounting evidence, hasn’t the NFL done something to improve the helmets?’

King says he decided to submit proposals directly to Conyer’s office to see if he can work to obtain congressional appropriations to conduct research using NFL helmets for the express purpose of improving them.

Elibe Elibe is a transportation engineering grad student on a mission. Here he rides the Detroit People Mover as it rolls by the Detroit River. (Photo by Alonso Delarte)

by Derrick Bean
COE Public Affairs Writer

Elibe A. Elibe (pronounced eh-lee-bay) is a graduate student working on his master’s degree in transportation engineering at Wayne State University and the Michigan-Ohio University Transportation Center’s Outstanding Student of the Year.

“I was very fortunate to even have been considered,” says Elibe. “I’m very fortunate for the opportunity I’ve gotten here at Wayne State. I’ve been telling all my family I didn’t come to Wayne State expecting to have all the fortunes: meeting politicians, working behind the scenes on public projects and learning the importance of cooperation. It’s a great honor. I’m very fortunate.”

Elibe is the son of Nigerian immigrants. His dad came to America in the early 1970s. Elibe grew up in southeastern Michigan. He says visiting his parents’ hometowns in Nigeria three times and seeing the way of life there helped him put his life here in perspective and make the most of his opportunities.

His parents were always a source of strength, he says. “The biggest thing they stressed is hard work. It was mostly nonverbal, but they instilled hard work within me. Throughout my entire life, I saw my parents work hard for the survival of me and my younger sister.”

When Elibe completed his undergraduate studies at Michigan State University he was unsure of his next move. After declining a few job offers, he chose to attend Wayne State based on its research work in transportation currently underway at the College of Engineering.

Elibe is certain he made the right decision because he has learned so much in so little time, he says. He credits Snehamay Khasnabis, professor of civil engineering, for encouraging and supporting him.

“I ask a lot of questions because a lot of staff members have done things that I want to do,” Elibe says. “When I first came here, the workload seemed impossible. I didn’t think I’d be able to survive. But Dr. Khasnabis was very patient with a lot of questions. He made the learning experience gradual, and I thank him for that because I was held accountable. It has been an open-ended experience. I’ve learned more with him than I could have ever learned in a textbook. He is always available.”

Elibe began work as a graduate research assistant under Khasnabis last February. He has since focused on projects pertaining to transportation planning (e.g., highway system planning) and public transportation.

Detroit’s public transportation has been under-funded compared to other major cities, says Elibe. The metropolitan area of Detroit, Warren and Livonia has the largest metro population in the country without a light-rail or rapid-rail transit system. Part of his research deals with the proposed Woodward Light-Rail Transit System. Elibe and his research group recently submitted a report based on their data collection. “Our ultimate goal for this project is to find out how many people would use light-rail transit based on current land use, trips and back-and-forth and traveling,” he says.

Washington D.C. will play host to Elibe and about a dozen other engineering “Student of the Year” recipients from regions across the nation on behalf of the U.S. Department of Transportation. Khasnabis nominated Elibe, in part, for his efforts on light-rail transit feasibility.

Another project has inspired Elibe to narrow his independent study choices. He wants to do something related to highway congestion management. The idea comes from researching tools that will help drivers on congested freeways, including an “intelligent transportation system” that puts out best alternative driving routes using changeable message boards. “It’s a sub-subject of my field of study that I don’t have much experience in,” says Elibe. “But I aim to do something like this in the private industry.”

He has always dreamed of being a civil engineer. “Since I was really young, I always wanted to go into engineering,” Elibe says. “I wanted to figure things out. I guess I favored (civil) over mechanical because it’s a very broad field. I felt it was an important degree of study because you can’t walk very far without seeing something related to civil engineering.”

Working behind the scenes has afforded him the ability to see how the industry works. His perception is clearer now. “I’ve been able to see different levels of communication,” Elibe says. “To see these projects work you have to speak to number-crunchers, politicians and the public. Communication is really important for anything you do because it’s a public interest. I was able to see the political process. It’s not as simple as ‘If you build it, they will come.’ There are economic, political, public interest and professional aspects.”

Elibe hopes to work in the field of “multi-modal transportation,” more extensive public transportation networks that include public rails that run from one state to another. “I’m looking to improve mobility of people in this country, and improve quality of life by doing that,” says Elibe. “I want to make public transportation better in terms of quality or how many people can access it.”