Mentoring women in electrical engineering: one person

can have a big impact

by Ruth Schechter on 05/31/10 at 12:00 pm
Female students make up 20 percent of engineering undergraduates, but
55 percent of all undergraduates. According to the National Science
Foundation, women occupy 11 percent of jobs in engineering fields but
comprise 46 percent of the total workforce. And in academia, a recent
study found women in the top electrical engineering departments
constituted less than 10 percent of tenure-line faculty.

For more than two decades, Robert Gray, PhD, a professor of electrical
engineering and a Clayman Institute faculty affiliate, has been fighting
those statistics. He has mentored more than 50 PhD candidates as they
worked on their theses—15 of them women—many who have gone on to
successful careers in academia.

“The number isn’t that high, but even a small impact is a big percentage,”
says Gray, who advises his students—male and female—with pragmatic
insights of academia, from writing grant proposals to preparing reviews.
“Word got around: after there was one happy, successful woman in the
group, it was a magnet to others.”

“You can feel as though you are representing your whole gender because there are so few women,” says Pamela
Cosman, PhD, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, San Diego, who
was one of Gray’s students in the late 1980s. “Bob gave lots of constructive, positive, detailed advice that really
bolstered women’s confidence. He encouraged us to work together, and I think many women responded to this
type of collaborative approach.”

In 2002, Gray received a Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring,
presented by the National Science Foundation, because he “demonstrated a successful model for attracting and
accommodating women to engineering, actively mentored, and encouraged women in their pursuit of electrical
engineering doctorates.”

“The award made me think about what had gone right, and I became a semi-official advocate and promoter of
women in engineering,” he says. Gray started to give presentations on how to mentor, which led to a workshop at
Stanford with 70 participants and a book, Mentoring for Academic Careers in Engineering. Three years later, Gray
conducted another workshop at the Banff International Research Station, followed by another follow-up
publication.

Though numbers of women in EE are getting better, he says, there is still plenty of room for improvement: While
10 percent of Stanford’s electrical engineering students are women, there are just four female electrical
engineering professors out of a staff of 55. Other institutions
show efforts to improve the balance: at MIT, the number of
female engineering faculty is 20 times what it was 40 years ago; at
the University of Washington about 20 percent of its EE faculty
are women, double the national average.

Gray says a big part of his success stemmed from creating an

environment of trust: He did not tolerate rudeness, overly
competitive or hostile behavior, and he encouraged social
activities to build collaboration and camaraderie.

Gray stays in touch with his former students, both to track their
success and to benefit from their hindsight. He suggests that
mentors introduce students to colleagues and nominate them for
BIRS 2007 Workshop for Mentoring in
membership on editorial, conference, and other professional Academia II
committees to help them make connections and relate to the big
picture of the profession. Mentors should also know their
students’ research implicitly and be willing to rehearse them extensively.

Cosman recalls a presentation she had to give while eight months pregnant and prone to fainting spells. “Bob
familiarized himself with my presentation, and sat in the front row so he could jump up and take over should the need
arise,” she says. “Fortunately I got through the talk just fine, but I wouldn’t have had the courage to go through with it
under those circumstances without his support.”

“Mentoring is just one way to help women succeed in engineering,” says Gray, who adds that diversity of all types
makes the field stronger and more responsive to society’s needs. “And we need to attract more women faculty. We
need to be more proactive in finding recruits and in developing methods to sniff out the best possible candidates.”
Gray cites Denice Denton’s advice on recruiting, “It’s a search committee, not an envelope-opening committee.”
Over the past two decades Gray has taken thoughtful actions to support women engineers and break down barriers to
their success. Today, 7.6 percent of the women in the top academic electrical engineering departments were members
of Gray’s research group. With his encouragement of colleagues to do the same, he hopes to help change the face of
engineering at Stanford.

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