Colleges 'engineering' change

SWARTHMORE, Pa. — When Kara Peterman was a high school student interested in engineering, she toured a high-powered engineering university in the Northeast that proudly displayed photos of its graduates.

She counted three women in one picture.

"I wasn't really encouraged," she recalled.

Today, Peterman is a 20-year-old junior engineering major at Swarthmore College — the elite school renowned primarily for its liberal arts program. It's one of an increasing number of colleges known for the humanities — English, history, philosophy — that are creating or strengthening niches for engineering students.

The schools are positioning themselves as alternatives for students, especially women and minorities, who might feel intimidated by larger, big-name engineering schools and their perceived macho culture.

The trend is driven partly by changes in accreditation standards in recent years that recognized the need for more well-rounded engineers who can better understand the communities in which they work.

"There's been a growing recognition in the last 20 years that preparing a young woman or young man ... to go out into the work force with a very technically narrow degree is not in the student's best interest and not in the employer's best interest," said M. Dayne Aldridge, dean of the engineering school at Mercer University in Macon, Ga.

Wellesley College, the top-tier women's school outside Boston, offered its first engineering course last spring. Smith College, an elite liberal arts school for women in western Massachusetts, graduated its first engineering majors in 2004. And New York University is considering a merger with an engineering school.

"Engineering is science in service to society," said Ted Ducas, a Wellesley professor. "Addressing fundamental problems of the world — that's of great interest to our students."

Engineering was the most popular declared major for this year's incoming freshmen at Swarthmore, which has had an engineering program or decades.

At Bucknell University, a small liberal arts school in Lewisburg, in central Pennsylvania, nearly 21 percent of incoming freshmen declared engineering as their prospective major. It was the most popular choice behind "undecided."

Aldridge also works for the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, which accredits some 2,700 programs at more than 550 colleges and universities nationwide. He helped revise the ABET accreditation criteria to make them less restrictive and technical and more compatible with liberal arts curricula. All programs had to adhere to the new standards beginning in 2001.