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I think the words in the background say it all…
“She’s a dreamer, a doer, a thinker.”

We have dreamed, we have done, and we have thought….a lot!

We have created our own destiny…and are celebrating in our own way as we adventure forward to have a greater impact on campus and beyond.

We celebrate, not only with our fabulous “north tower teammates” (pictures above from our celebration today) who are some of our biggest supporters and collaborators, but with our students, alums, and friends near and far.

And we reflect on our collective 35 years of advancing gender equity in engineering at UT. This will be the first of a few posts that celebrate our history and legacy with the Women in Engineering Program (WEP) at UT Austin.

Let’s start with our years of service and changes in enrollment over these many years!

I worked in the WEP office as a chemical engineering student from 1992-1993 when the program was founded. I worked for the first director and co-founded the WEP Evening with Industry Banquet in 1992. WEP and the Banquet turn 30 this next year.

I came back to the Cockrell School in 1999 after 6 years at Dow Chemical. My first role was as Director of the Scholarship Program and Undergrad Recruiting where I created (with IT support – thanks Lisa!!) a scholarship database and online management system (it was all done by hand on paper when I arrived) and created a recruiting program for high achieving high school applicants.

Two years later I was offered the position of WEP Director. I started the job in June 2001 and left on maternity leave with kid #1, Kale, in July. I always know how long I’ve been with WEP because it’s the same number of years as Kale is old.

Ana Dison joined me in WEP in 2006 after 6 years in the Cockrell School. She and I have been a team ever since. We’ve had 15 amazing years of creating, strategizing, advocating, instigating, collaborating, laughing, and crying together in WEP….with so many fabulous full-time and student staff on our team throughout the years.

What has happened with the enrollment of women in engineering at UT over all these years? We have grown our programming to serve nearly double the number of women and we’ve reached the highest number and percent of women enrolled in history!

First Year Undergrad Enrollment

• When I started in 2001, 22.1% of our first year students identified as women (254 women out of 1149)
• When Ana started in 2006, 21.6% of our first year students identified as women (259 women out of 1198)
• This fall 2021, we celebrate our highest percent and number of first year women enrolled in history: 34.1%, 496 women out of 1453.

I’ve had the privilege of welcoming 7,013 first-year women to engineering and WEP since 2001.

Ana has welcomed 5,681 first-year women to engineering and WEP since 2006.

Overall Undergrad Enrollment

• 2001 – 22.2%, 1051 women out of 4734
• 2006 – 21.4%, 1059 women out of 4951
• 2021 – 31.1%, 1925 women out of 6195

Overall undergraduate enrollment has grown as well – the same number of staff throughout all this time and double the number of women served. I think that’s something to celebrate! Huge increases in numbers and percent enrollment of women…and somehow managing to do so with the same number of full-time staff (and actually with just Ana and me for the past 18 months as we have not been able to hire).

More to come…as we reflect and celebrate before we launch into our next adventure on Monday.