When I was in my master’s engineering class at Auburn, there were very, very few women in the school of engineering. There were none in the graduate school of engineering. And I am ashamed to admit I did not do my part early in my professional engineering career to help women get jobs at my firm or to make it easy for them to advance. But I soon learned the mistake I was making, which was to follow the then biased rules of the road. I changed and started recruiting women, mentoring women, and promoting women engineers. My firm’s performance increased significantly compared to those engineering firms still following the old ways. Having a daughter played no small part in my change of heart. Now, watching her soar with NEW has given me great hope for my granddaughter’s future. So I want to do my part by working to help women succeed in math, particularly statistics. I have far too many good students enter my classes introducing themselves as ‘math challenged,’ or ‘afraid of math,’ or who delay taking statistics because of the fear our educational system ingrained in them. My hope is to find ways to help women begin to believe they can do just as well or better than men in STEM. And in business.
So go NEW!
What’s Keeping Women Out of Science, Math Careers? Calculus and Confidence
