MEDIA RELEASE

CSUN’s College of Engineering Recognized for High Percentage
Of Women Who Are Tenured Professors or on the Tenure Track

(NORTHRIDGE, Calif., March 11, 2008) — The College of Engineering and Computer Science at California State University, Northridge outranks most engineering schools in the percentage of women faculty members who are either tenured or on the tenure track.

In a discipline once virtually dominated by male professors, women now make up nearly 18 percent of tenured or tenure-track faculty in engineering and computer science at CSUN.

That’s better than nearly 80 percent of the U.S. universities that have more than two dozen faculty members in the field, according to data published by the American Society for Engineering Education. In the survey, Cal State Northridge ranked 21st nationally for its high percentage of women on the engineering faculty.

Among the tenured engineering and computer science professors at CSUN, nine are women, according to professor Diane Schwartz, interim associate dean for the College of Engineering and Computer Science, and another woman, an assistant professor, is on tenure track. The college includes the departments of civil engineering and applied mechanics, computer science, electrical and computer engineering, manufacturing systems engineering and management and mechanical engineering.

Professor Bonita Campbell, founding chair of the Department of Manufacturing Systems, Engineering and Management, was the first woman hired on the tenure track at CSUN. She came to Northridge in 1975.

When Campbell began her undergraduate studies, most engineering schools routinely excluded women professors and some universities refused to allow women students to major in engineering.

"You were closed out," she explained. "When I graduated from high school there were a number of institutions that didn’t accept women in their engineering technology areas."

Good in math and science, Campbell also loved physics and wanted to become an engineer like her father. But, back then, some women who did complete engineering degrees couldn’t "get a full-fledged position in engineering," she said. "They could be draftsmen or helper or something like that, but firms simply wouldn’t hire them because they were women, and they were told so."

Campbell, however, managed to land a job with Aerospace Corporation before joining CSUN’s faculty.

It wasn’t easy being first, she said. "That was long ago and some of the senior tenured faculty had been around for a long time living in a different kind of world, so it was a little rocky. The probationary period was really rough. I was up against old boys questioning" my abilities.

It was also a little lonely. "There may have been five or six women students in the whole college," she said.

Shortly after her arrival, Campbell started a program to increase the number of women who studied engineering. Though directed at students, her initiatives also helped women who wanted to move into technical fields or leave industry for academia.

"During the late ‘70s there was this huge push on moving women into technical fields, into professions, into the workforce," Campbell said.

Schwartz came to the campus in 1979 from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. At JPL, she had begun working with computers. "I really liked the problem-solving," Schwartz said. She also was interested in teaching, having taught as a graduate student.

"Times were different. Computer science was very new, and they were hiring people from all different disciplines," she said. Because few women, or men, held doctorate degrees in computer science, her degrees in mathematics qualified her for a tenure-track position and academic rank.

By then, Campbell’s program was making a difference. She also identified potential students and faculty members through the Society for Women Engineers and the Association of Women in Science.

"In the ‘70s and ‘80s, we were bringing lots of women in," she said. That program, which ended in 1992, also produced CSUN electrical and computer engineering professor Deborah van Alphen, who left her first career, teaching high school. Another faculty member, associate professor Brenda Timmerman, was sponsored by the chancellor’s office to get her doctorate in computer science.

New faculty member, assistant professor Ashley Geng, is in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.

Today, they are teaching more than the handful of women engineering students that Campbell initially encountered years ago. Women students represented 14 percent of the enrollment in engineering and computer science at CSUN during the fall 2007 semester.

The percentage is even higher in certain areas.

"Our graduate program in engineering management runs about 35 percent female," Campbell said. She ran the program until recently, and her leadership attracted women students. "They knew there was a woman in charge: ‘So, if she can do it, I can do it.’ There is still that level of uncertainty, so when they start seeing women in positions of authority, they begin to say, ‘Ah-ha, there’s power.’"

When women students see women in positions of authority throughout an institution and at the top of the university, such as CSUN President Jolene Koester, "it makes a difference," Campbell said. "It sends a message."