Making the world work: women engineers fought hard to get there but see too few following their path.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: [Q2 tech report] WOMEN IN ENGINEERING

Heather Doty is something of a rock star in the engineering world. After finishing a master's in civil engineering at CU, she went into aerospace, working on the James Webb Space Telescope at Ball Aerospace from 2002 to 2008. Now that the telescope's design phase has given way to construction--it's slated for launch in 2014--the 34-year-old Doty is working at Ball on star trackers: a navigation system that uses faraway stars to guide spacecraft. She's also president of her local section of the Society of Women Engineers, and lieutenant governor of the six-state region. And she's something of a rock star in the Zimbabwean marimba world to boot: She performs regularly in Boulder with her marimba quartet, Madziva Mana.

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Her secret: "Pretty much no TV."

But Doty is an exception to the norm. While women have made strident gains in medicine, law and other fields in recent decades, women represented 18 percent of engineering undergraduates nationally, and just a tenth of the work force. Both numbers have declined from peaks in the 1990s.

"Engineering is one of the last fields where women are truly under-represented," says Kristy Schloss, president of Aurora-based Schloss Engineered Equipment, which designs and makes industrial and water-treatment equipment.

Schloss believes the gender disparity in her field is largely a communication problem. "I went into engineering because I wanted to make a difference," she says. "There's nothing an engineer hasn't touched or affected. Engineers make the world work. Part of it is knowing it's an option. We're trying to raise the profile of women in engineering."

Jackie Sullivan, associate dean for inclusive excellence at University of Colorado-Boulder's College of Engineering, echoes Schloss' sentiments. "During this decade, women have been going to college in droves," she says. "We've broken through in every field but engineering. We have a tough time convincing women that engineering is a helping profession."

The problem, Sullivan says, is engineering has been messaged to students based on input--i.e. difficult math and science classes are prerequisites--rather than output--i.e. engineers solve real-world problems and improve people's lives. "You don't hear health care message itself through organic chemistry," she says. "But in engineering we have messaged ourselves through calculus and physics."

Sullivan points to a study published in The Chronicle of Higher...