Women Are Making Slow Progress in Obtaining Engineering Faculty Positions

A new report by Brian Yoder for the American Society for Engineering Education finds that women are making some progress in obtaining faculty positions in engineering, but there is still a very long way to go before women can reach parity with men in these positions. The data shows that in 2011, women were 13.8 percent of all faculty in engineering positions at colleges and universities throughout the United States. In 2002, women held 9.2 percent of all engineering faculty positions. This is indeed significant progress, albeit at a slow rate.

If we break down the numbers by faculty rank, we find that in 2011 women made up 8.7 percent of all full professors of engineering. Women were 15.8 percent percent of all associate professors in the discipline. At the assistant professor level, women were 23.0 percent of all faculty in engineering.

In the fall of 2011, the University of Michigan had 68 women faculty in tenure-track engineering positions, the most of any university in the United States. MIT, Georgia Tech, and Penn State were the only other universities in country to have at leave 50 women faculty in tenure-track engineering posts.

In percentage terms, the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering in Needham, Massachusetts, had the highest percentage of women among its engineering faculty at 37.1 percent. Rowan University, Santa Clara University, the University of the Pacific, and California State University in Los Angeles were the only other universities in 2011 where women made up more than 25 percent of the total engineering faculty.