WE@RIT | Kids Out and About Rochester <

WE@RIT

Address: 
Rochester Institute of Technology 77 Lomb Memorial Drive, Building 9 Room 2505
Rochester , NY , 14623-5603
Phone: 585.475.6321
43° 4' 48.2736" N, 77° 40' 25.5828" W
Contact name: 
Kathy Ehrlich-Scheffer
Subjects / Categories: 
Ages for which our activities are most appropriate: 
WE@RIT, RIT's women in engineering organization, founded in 2003, offers a variety of programs each year to help introduce girls to engineering.

Over the past several years, Kate Gleason College of Engineering has experienced tremendous success in the area of increasing gender diversity. WE@RIT, our women in engineering organization which was founded in 2003, offers over twenty programs each year aimed at increasing the representation of women within engineering through outreach and community building. Over two thousand young women and girls participate in our outreach and community building programs each year. RIT college students are heavily engaged in WE@RIT activities and a strong sense of community has been created in the college by so many people championing such a cause. The community within the Kate Gleason College appeals strongly to women and over the past five years we have seen the number of women who chose to attend RIT for engineering double (which is in sharp contrast to the slightly downward trend nationally). Women engineering students also consistently perform better relative to our men as measured by retention rates and GPA, our women being retained at a rate that is 10 percentage points higher than the men, while the national statistics are just the opposite. In 2008, WE@RIT received two national awards in recognition for its outstanding service and accomplishments in promoting gender diversity within engineering, the WEPAN (Women in Engineering Proactive Network) Women in Engineering Program Award and the Maria Mitchell Women in Science Award. All of these successes are not possible without the strong support from key partners including Toyota, Harris RF, Gleason Foundation, National Science Foundation, Intel, and the New York State Department of Education Perkins IV.

Technology/Computers