That underexposure is stumbling block for many women who want a career involving math and science. Particularly in mechanical engineering, women tend to think of building things as men's work, Lighty said.

More women, for example, gravitate towards bioengineering because they can see the direct benefits of how inventing new medical devices can help people. Those societal benefits are often less obvious in a mechanical field.

At the U., only 12 of 215 mechanical engineering majors are women.

"We need to sell engineering as a creative career. We build things and that requires not only knowledge, but creativity," Lighty said. "It's not just about numbers, it's about wanting to solve problems elegantly. This is how we can stay competitive in the world."

To lure more women into engineering, Lighty said U. leaders are working to hook young women while they are in high school, if not sooner. Summer camps with hands-on experiments teach girls what engineering is and exactly what courses they need to take in high school to get into the major in college.

Without a substantial core of science and math classes in high school, Lighty said female students are often too intimidated once they get to college to jump into an engineering major.

The pre-college programs also let girls build relationships with faculty. For Davis, that encouragement was missing when she decided to graduate high school early to get a head start on her engineering program.

"When I told my counselor that I was going to go into engineering, he said, 'That would be a waste of your money. Why don't you just get a boyfriend and stay in high school another year?' " Davis said.

Once she got to college, however, Davis found support as part of a special science and engineering program at the U. Davis spent eight weeks before her freshman year learning about engineering, meeting other female students and getting to know the female faculty.

Recruiting those women faculty to be mentors is also key to enticing more girls into engineering, Hailey added. Without being able to see successful engineering women, the next generation of female engineers may get discouraged and fall away, she said.

Three female professors who were added to USU's engineering faculty recently as part of the statewide engineering initiative have been women. While that only brings the total to six, or about 6 percent of the faculty, Hailey said it's a start.

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E-mail: estewart@desnews.com