THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN WEDNESDAY; SEPTEMBER 16 2009
NEWS
5A
CAMPUS
For the few engineering women,a new mentor group
Melody Redburn, Wichita senior, and Laura Francoviglia, alumna, share a laugh at The Society of Women Engineers' Evening with Industry Tuesday night at the Kansas Union Ballroom. The program puts engineering students in contact with potential employers in the industry. Even though they are underrepresented in the School of Engineering, female students have academically out-performed male students.
Chance Dibben/KANSAN
BY RAY SEGEBRECHT
Lauren Fitzpatrick, Overland Park senior, didn't expect to encounter an overflow of females when she enrolled as an engineering student her freshman year. What she found wasn't even close. For almost the last decade, women have accounted for approximately 20 percent of engineering undergraduates, the lowest female percentage of any school at the University, according to the KU Academic Information System.
But even that knowledge could not prepare Fitzpatrick for when she enrolled in aerospace engineering and found only five other female students in her graduating class.
"I was terrified," Fitzpatrick said. "In aerospace engineering, we have the fewest girls."
Fitzpatrick said a formal female mentoring program didn't exist when she began her freshman year, but she would have appreciated it.
"If I would have had that, there would have been a little less stress as a freshman," Fitzpatrick said. "In the School of Engineering, you're surrounded by males. You're always questioning, Am I supposed to be here?"
Now a senior, Fitzpatrick has finally found an opportunity for this type of relationship, but instead of receiving advice, she is providing it.
She volunteers in the Society for Women Engineers Mentoring
Program, new to engineering students. She has become, for three female freshmen, the resource she didn't have.
Callie Statz, Ballwin, Mo., senior and coordinator for the program, said it would be part of the Society of Women Engineers, which she was president of last year. The program paired any female freshman interested in the school with female upperclassmen on a similar degree path. Statz said. Boldridge said the 16 participating mentors give advice on extracurricular activities and student life, as well as offer tutoring for classes.
Rachel Robinson, Overland Park freshman and one of the students Fitzpatrick is mentoring, said they have already met multiple times this semester.
"She helped me plan out the next four years, including summer school," Robinson said. "I'm so grateful for it. Without that, I'm pretty sure I'd be kind of lost."
Heather Weed, Topeka senior and current SWE president, said the program was just one of a variety of new efforts this fall in the School of Engineering to make current and prospective female students feel more welcome. She said that this year she wanted to use SWE to promote engineering to high school women and help put those already involved in the program in touch with employers.
"I really want to make it go somewhere," Weed said. "It can do so much to help women in engineering. It can be a unifying group
to let us help each other."
Weed said she made the decision to switch her major to engineering after receiving inspiration from female friends she met on a summer study abroad program in Germany after her sophomore year.
Weed said she recognized that studying engineering could be more intimidating for women without the support she had.
"We can't reach out to enough girls," Weed said. "You have to be
strong and confident in yourself to be an engineer. It's kind of that kind of field. For one reason or another, women don't see themselves as being able to make it."
But the women who have opted to study engineering have been doing fine. Jill Hummels, public relations director for the school, said the average grade point average of female graduates in 2007 was virtually the same as the male graduates. Last year, women made
up 20.3 percent of undergraduate engineering students at the University, according to the KU Academic Information System. The School of Business had the second lowest percentage of female undergraduates $ ^{-}$ 37.6 percent- and the School of Social Welfare had the highest at 91.2 percent.
Boldridge predicted that the percentage of female undergraduate engineering students this year would drop down, between 19 and
20 percent, but she said she hoped reaching out to high school students this year would help bring the figure back up.
The University of Kansas isn't the only university in the state trying to strengthen its female engineering community. Kansas State University, where women account for between 12 and 13 percent of undergraduate engineering students, has also implemented programs for attracting and supporting female engineering students, said Kimberly Douglas-Mankin, director of the Women in Engineering & Science Program.
"We have a pretty extensive set of programs at K-State," Douglas-Mankin said. "What we're doing right now is we're looking at specific programs and whether those programs have an impact."
Fitzpatrick said she hoped the new KU mentor program would have a positive impact on both current and future female freshmen in the School of Engineering.
Even though the percentage of women in engineering at the University has remained fairly consistent, Fitzpatrick said she thought the extra efforts the school was making this year could help it grow.
"We want to bump our female percentages from 20 to 30 to 40 percent." Fitzpatrick said. "And I want to be a part of that."
ENVIRONMENT
Edited by Jacob Muselmann
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Columbia River flows near Corbett, Ore., May 24, 2005. The Obama administration says it will be more aggressive in protecting declining Pacific Northwest salmon runs and will study breaching some dams as a last resort in a long-awaited management plan. The administration submitted the plan to a federal judge Tuesday in Portland, Ore. Called a "biological opinion," it will guide hydroelectric dam operations and fish conservation programs in the Columbia Basin for the next decade.
Critics argue salmon policy
BY WILLIAM MCCALL
Associated Press
PORTLAND, Ore. — Calling it an "insurance policy" for Pacific Northwest salmon, the Obama administration on Tuesday offered up a tougher conservation plan for the fish that includes climate-change monitoring and the "last-resort" possibility of removing dams.
The plan submitted to a federal judge for approval was a revised version of a Bush administration plan that had been in the works for years, but which was rejected.
Reaction to the new plan was sharply divided, echoing a debate
that stretches back decades over balancing Columbia River Basin fish survival and hydroelectric dams; It either goes too far or not far enough.
Environmentalists say it does little to enhance the Bush administration plan the judge has already called inadequate, while business groups worry it could lead to drastic measures such as dam removal on the lower Snake River in southeastern state.
"We appreciate that President Obama took the time to look at this, but we see little more than a veiled attempt to pass off the old Bush plan as a new one," said Greg Stahl, assistant policy director for Idaho Rivers United.
Another environmentalist was even more critical, calling the new plan "illegal and scientifically un-sound."
Nicole Cordan, legal and policy director of the Save Our Wild Salmon coalition, said the Obama administration acknowledged the analysis in the Bush plan was uncertain and potentially overly optimistic but stuck with much of it.
"We believe the time has come to get out of the courtroom."
"Again, we've had eight years of these same actions and same kind of work, and what we're seeing is a whole lot of money spent and not a whole lot of impact happening on the ground," Cordan said.
JANE LUBCHENCO Chief of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Most of the $750 million spent each year on salmon conservation comes from Bonneville Power Administration ratepayers. The Portland-based BPA is the federal power marketing agency that shares salmon recovery management with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
The plan submitted by NOAA
professor Jane Lubchenco, said the additional measures recommended by the Obama administration take into account the uncertainties mentioned by critics and tries to adjust for them.
to U.S. District Judge James Redden on Tuesday is called a "biological opinion" that sets the requirements for ensuring salmon survival under the Endangered Species Act.
She noted the new plan would immediately expand research and monitoring, and set specific biological "triggers" for strong conservation measures if numbers of endangered or threatened fish fail to reach certain benchmarks.
The chief of NOAA, former Oregon State University
Lubchenco, widely considered a top expert in marine ecology, defended the scientific models used to draft the plan but said more research would be required to make sure it works and to adapt it to variable conditions, including climate change.
She called for an end to litigation over the plan in order to move forward with conservation measures that may not enjoy unanimous support but resulted from a regional consensus, including many American Indian tribes.
"It's definitely not business as usual," Lubchenco told The Associated Press in an interview.
"We believe the time has come to get out of the courtroom," Lubchenco said.
The biological opinion has been a work in progress since 2000, and has twice been rejected by Redden who, at one point, threatened to take over management of Columbia River Basin hydroelectric dams.
But some elements of the plan, including a recommendation that the Corps of Engineers study the possible removal of the four lower Snake River dams, raised serious concerns with U.S. Rep.Doc Hastings, the top Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee.
"The Obama administration has put dam removal back on the table and delivered just what dam removal extremists have been demanding," said Hastings, whose committee has jurisdiction over fish recovery and federal hydropower dams.
Steve Wright, Bonneville Power Administration chief, added that hydroelectricity produced by the dams is not only relatively cheap, it does not cause any carbon dioxide pollution, considered the main cause of global warming.
Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, said the Obama administration made improvements over the previous proposal but he worries about more litigation stalling salmon recovery efforts.
His spokeswoman, Julie Edwards, said Merkley agrees with Republican Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch of Idaho "that a regional dialogue among all the stakeholders will be necessary to forge a lasting solution."
INTERNATIONAL Japanese prime minister and cabinet resign
TOKYO — Japan's Prime Minister Taro Aso and his Cabinet resigned Wednesday Japanese time to pave the way for parliament to elect Yukio Hatoyama as the country's next leader.
Hatoyama, head of the left- of-center Democratic Party of Japan, has promised to shake up Japan's political system, cutting government waste, reinvigorat-
The top officials resigned after holding their final Cabinet meeting early Wednesday morning, officials at the prime minister's office said.
The resignations were a formality so that parliament's lower house, now controlled by Hatoyama's party following their landslide election victory last month, can vote him in as Japan's prime minister. Hatoyama's victory ends more than 50 years of nearly unbroken rule by Aso's Liberal Democratic Party.
ing the world's second-largest economy and focusing policies on consumers. not big business
Parliament was to convene in a special session later in the day to formally select the new prime minister. Hatoyama's party controls 308 of the 480 seats in the body's lower chamber, which selects the prime minister, virtually assuring him of the post.
"I am excited by the prospect of changing history".Hatoyama said.
Associated Press
HPV Fact #11:
You don't have to actually have sex to get HPV—the virus that causes cervical cancer.
There's something you can do. Visit your campus health center.
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