Change at Syracuse University - Female Engineers on the Rise!

I don't read the Daily Orange as much as I used to, but today this article caught my attention immediately. It said female enrollment had increased in Syracuse University's engineering school. 

This made me think back to my time there, and my observations then. 

SU's L.C. Smith College of Engineering seemed like the MCC or Oxford's colleges of yore, except there was never a bar on women. They simply didn't take up engineering.

This isn't about the small groups of girls from India or China that obviously would be doing nothing else at an American school. The only female students that took math or science came from these countries, is what it looked like then.  

Syracuse was/is a female majority university - with over 56 % of its students being women. And you'd see them far from the engineering school - taking up languages, art, politics, advertising, film & radio, journalism, music, home sciences, gardening, whatever, but not anything to do with machines or computers. 

During all my time there, I never met a girl that leaned toward an engineering major. Typically I'd hear they wanted to teach 'special needs kids' and become Jr. Mother Teresas. Why, I got a response to this effect all the time, when they were asked about study/career plans. I also got the sense they were at SU to have a good time.

Not there's anything wrong with that. I went to Newhouse at SU! (never mind its lofty reputation)
Photo: Keegan Barber | Staff Photographer, Daily Orange

But this here is a refreshing piece of news!

Women are showing an interest in science, and are actually taking up full engineering programs at SU. Some of them have even taken up mech. Way to go!

There's been a female dean of the school for over 5 years now.


The article talks about 'a lack of encouragement toward women to pursue math and science opportunities in college',  the perception that a four-year engineering program is too complex, and few female role models.

Also, I daresay some offered - 'How can college be fun this way? What about all the pah-taying?'

Dean Laura Steinberg is quoted as saying 'The United States needs to change how it communicates the field of engineering to female students. Describing not only the principles learned in engineering, but the problems that engineers solve as well, is an important distinction.' 

It looks like some of that has happened in the past twelve years.

Conspicuously, the Daily Orange didn't speak to or feature a single female American student of Asian or Indian origin. That, I believe, would have taken some of the newsworthiness away?

The Curious Case of Bethany Button - meet anyone that knew the secret to eternal youth?

The female Benjamin.
Okay, so how can anyone still be only 2 years older now, than she was at college in '98?

Back in SU, sure, it was common for many new foreign students to feign their ages, like no one one could find out. For what reason, I could not discern. But many did lie away, people (M and F) were 19 for three years in succession.

However, I ran into someone recently that was a couple years ahead of me at Syracuse, and she's still in her early 20s. Time has stood still for a decade. Aging's been arrested. She's now the Curious Case of Bethany Button .

Straight-faced, she declared to a group of acquaintances, that she needed to pay more for auto insurance on account of her 'yoot' , and of course that she hated getting her ID out for nights out, cos 'twas a nuisance to keep getting carded. (What a bother to have the 21+ proof)

She was about to say she'd just stepped out of school when she saw yours truly. And I was good n' gentlemanly. =)

March Madness - Can you believe Syracuse?

A fantastic run with two OTs to the Big East Finals before running out of steam. And now to the Sweet 16 during March Madness.

Good stuff, Orange.

Layoffs at my college

Read in the Daily Orange that my school laid off 48 staffers last week. Whenever I hear Syracuse University and finances in the same sentence, I tend to pay attention. People that know me, are familiar with my view of SU.

SU is in dire financial straits? Really?

What happened to all the $ from incessant solicitations, the giant endowment, tuition increases, and selling off square blocks on the quad to any alumni that that wanted their names etched on granite?

Maybe it didn't work out, or they wanted more. I do hope one effect of the situation is an end to scholarships, and funding to students of no merit - SU was lax in researching credentials.

Feel philanthropic toward your school?

An alumni survey sent to me triggered this thought. How many solicitations for funds do alumni get from their schools? I get about two a year from Syracuse University, and I really thought my school was fabulously wealthy with a giant endowment. Now a lot of people know what I thought of my time at SU. There's not a chance in hell that I'd contribute a dime to that institution. Several friends also thought the same about their colleges - they recall tuition increases, and hard times.

Maybe a degree from SU's Newhouse School opens doors for me professionally, but I had strong reservations on how the system worked back then. For me, graduation was something to get done with, and the happy stuff started after then.

The threshold of all good things to come was when I moved to Williamstown, MA early in 1999. Syracuse was to quickly become a memory. Heck, even the winters in Billsville felt better - the snow felt 'cultural', unlike the white stuff in Siber-cuse. The happy times continue.... =)