Educators in Idaho, U.S. have responsibility to counter gender discrimination in STEM

In mid-July, one of my graduate students at Boise State University was selected as one of six recipients — three males and three females — who were awarded an IEEE Power and Energy Society Outstanding Student Scholarship at the 2022 PES General Meeting in Denver.

This prestigious scholarship award was established to recognize PES members who have chosen an academic path leading to an electric power and energy engineering career. Recipients are selected through a competitive and vetted nomination process based on academic achievements, contributions to meeting community and humanitarian needs, and leadership in advancing student engagement within PES.

Engineering is one of those fields that is still male-dominated, with women representing significantly less than half of the practitioners. According to a 2019 report from the United States Census Bureau, female engineers represent only about 13% of the total engineering workforce.

Women made up about 20% of those receiving engineering degrees, but the Harvard Business Review reported that 40% of them never entered the profession or quit.

In today’s column, I would like to pay homage to Edith Clarke (1883-1959), who was the first woman to be professionally employed as an electrical engineer in the United States, and the first female professor of electrical engineering in the country. Clarke was the first woman to deliver a technical paper at a conference of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers; the first woman to be recognized by the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society; and the first woman to be named as a Fellow of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.

She wrote an influential two-volume textbook titled “Circuit Analysis of A-C Power Systems,” which served to educate power system engineers at many universities for many years.

I first heard of Clarke in my electrical engineering classes at the University of Illinois. We used the first volume of her celebrated two-book series in a power class on symmetrical components. I remember being impressed with the level and rigor of the mathematics used throughout the textbook. My professor spoke of her in glowing terms, and of the matrix transformation that bears her name today.

Clarke was born on Feb. 10, 1883, in Howard County, Maryland. In 1908, she graduated from Vassar College with a degree in mathematics and astronomy. After college, she spent time teaching mathematics and physics at a private school in San Francisco and at Marshall College (now Marshall University) in Huntington, West Virginia. She spent time studying civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin but eventually left to become a “computer” at AT&T in 1912.

While at AT&T, she computed for George Campbell, an American engineer who was a pioneer in developing and applying quantitative mathematical methods to the problems of long-distance telegraphy and telephony. At night, Clarke studied electrical engineering at Columbia University.

In 1918, she enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A year later, she became the first woman to earn a master’s of science in electrical engineering. After graduation, she wanted to work at either Westinghouse Electric or General Electric. She had a hard time securing employment with one of these companies since they did not have an opening for a female engineer.

In 1920, GE offered Clarke a job directing calculations in their turbine engine department, a position like the one she previously held at AT&T. She was not allowed to do electrical engineering work; she was not earning the same salary as her male counterparts; and she had a lower professional status than men doing the same work.

In 1921, Clarke took a leave of absence from GE to teach at the Constantinople Women’s College in Turkey. When she returned the next year, she was offered a job by GE as a salaried electrical engineer in the Central Station Engineering Department and became the first professional engineer in the United States.

Clarke retired from GE in 1945 and joined the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin, where she taught for 10 years until she retired in 1957. She was considered an authority on electric power systems and worked on the design and building of several dams in the West. Clarke was posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Clarke’s story highlights the fact that life is not always a straight path. It is usually a journey full of twists and turns due to external forces outside of one’s control. Gender discrimination was real during her time, and it still can be an issue today. There continues to be a bias toward women in male-dominated fields.

However, when given a chance, talent has a way of breaking that glass ceiling facing women in STEM fields.

When I nominated my student for this award in March, I knew that it was a long shot because of the odds against her. However, I believed in the fairness of the selection process in our technical society and I believed in her chances. She had met the qualifications for this award. It was my role as an educator and a mentor to help level the playing field for her and let her talent shine.

Said Ahmed-Zaid is a Boise State University engineering professor and the 2004 recipient of the annual HP Award for Distinguished Leadership in Human Rights. The Idaho Statesman’s weekly faith column features a rotation of writers from many different faiths and perspectives.