Seventy-five years ago, a group of 61 women—all of them attending or having graduated from engineering schools—convened for a weekend in late May amid the leafy hills of Ringwood, New Jersey. The gathering marked the first unified national meeting of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), held at what was then The Cooper Union’s country retreat, known as Green Camp. Among the programs on offer were talks such as “Open Your Own Door to an Engineering Career” and “Being a Woman as Well as an Engineer” along with opportunities to bond over games, song, and food. From that inaugural gathering of young women, representing 20 different engineering schools, SWE has grown to 47,000 members across the United States and internationally. And for the past 75 years, Cooper’s ties to the organization have remained close.

SWE is today the largest and most active student group in the Albert Nerken School of Engineering. That enthusiasm can easily be seen as part of a wider Cooper Union legacy of coeducation and advocacy dating back to early Great Hall rallies for women’s suffrage. More immediately, it’s due to efforts within the school to promote an equitable and inclusive academic culture. Thanks to a devoted network of faculty mentors, fellow students, and alumnae role models, young women at Cooper are blazing paths forward in disciplines where women are underrepresented nationally.

Lizelle Ocfemia, president of the Cooper chapter of SWE, sees that kind of support as being especially beneficial to incoming students. “Being elected freshman representative pulled me deep into SWE during my first year,” she says. Now a senior, Ocfemia began studying electrical engineering at Cooper in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. “SWE events had a lot of impact that year. We were not only creating new connections for women in engineering but also trying to mend past connections for students returning from a year of remote learning.”

To maintain a feeling of community, the chapter hosts two to three events per month, ranging from social activities like karaoke and board game nights to professional development programs with guest speakers from major firms. In February, they invited a panel of female Cooper engineering faculty members to talk about their research and answer student questions. Alumnae are supportive as well, participating as panelists, lending their knowledge to résumé workshops, and providing internship opportunities. Most recently, SWE welcomed alumna Esther Whang EE’23 MEE’23 back to Cooper to share her experience as a biomedical engineering Ph.D. student at Johns Hopkins University.

“We partner with industry experts and professional organizations, but we also collaborate with nonprofits, which I really like,” Ocfemia adds. Last semester, for example, the group volunteered with Heart of Dinner, a nonprofit that delivers care packages to address food insecurity among older Asian American adults living in New York City. Peer mentorship has been another focus. Through a Big Sis/Little Sis program, launched this year, senior SWE members share advice and guidance with those who are just beginning their Cooper journey.

Finding classmates with relatable backgrounds and experiences can be a strong motivator for young women, explains Lisa Shay, associate dean for educational innovation. “I think we’re doing a good job with recruiting women, but more importantly we’re doing a lot to support and retain them once they arrive at Cooper. We now have a critical mass of women in most majors.” In fact, women comprise 42 percent of Cooper’s engineering students for the 2024–25 academic year.

Having faculty members who can serve as mentors to those students is crucial for retention, Shay says. As recently as 2013, women comprised just 6.2 percent of the full-time engineering faculty at Cooper. Today, that number mirrors the student body at approximately 42 percent, well above the national figure of 19.6 percent for higher education (according to 2022 data from the American Society for Engineering Education). Broadening both the perspectives represented and the areas of research in faculty hiring were among the goals of a six-year strategic plan led by Barry Shoop, dean of the school of engineering, who has worked closely with Shay and associate dean Ruben Savizky ChE’98 to foster diversity and inclusion. The plan specifically recognizes “a need to make engineering programs more engaging, relevant, and more welcoming, especially to groups traditionally underrepresented in engineering.”

“I was really encouraged and inspired by my electrical engineering professors,” Ocfemia says. Electrical engineering, which historically attracts the lowest percentage of female enrollment at Cooper, is a major where faculty engagement can be decisive. “I came from a very large performing arts high school and decided to switch from fine art to an engineering major,” says Ocfemia. “I remember Professor [Neveen] Shlayan being like, ‘Lizelle, I know you can figure this out. I believe in you.’ She was always there during my freshman and sophomore years to push me forward.”

The bigger challenge when it comes to transforming engineering education is cultural. Many children are stopped short of realizing their full potential simply because of dominant biases and double standards that reinforce the idea of technical aptitude being inherently masculine. According to a National Science Foundation-funded study published in 2024, gendered stereotypes shape perception of STEM-related skills from very early on. Surveyed children as young as age six tended to express beliefs that boys are better than girls in computer science and engineering.

“At times I was the only woman in my class,” says Shay, recalling her own educational path as a West Point cadet studying electrical engineering. “You walked in knowing you weren’t going to be welcomed with open arms.” Formerly the director of the US Military Academy’s electrical engineering program, Shay arrived at Cooper in 2019 following a three-decade Army career. “I was astounded when my first electrical engineering class at Cooper was about 30 percent women. It’s not a field that women traditionally go into, so that was a revelation for me.”

In fact, a 2023 report from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics shows that women earn only 24 percent of bachelor’s degrees in engineering. The proportion of women with computer science degrees is particularly low, at just 21 percent. That disparity widens even further in the workforce, with women representing approximately 15 percent of professional engineers according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

One unintended upshot of creating a more inclusive collegiate environment is that the “real-world” gender gap can occasionally slip from view. “I think it’s especially shocking for students who study abroad or who go on internships,” says Shay, who oversees the Summer Study Abroad program in the school of engineering. “They may be aware that women are in the minority in engineering, but it surprises them to see such extreme disparity in the field. In a way, it makes me feel good because they’re so used to working with Cooper professors who are women that they don’t think of themselves as a minority.”

A recent survey conducted by Cooper’s Engineering Advisory Council found a desire among many students in the school to have conversations about the realities of entering workplaces dominated by men. The decisions female graduates face in considering job benefits or relocating to different states—especially following the 2022 US Supreme Court overturning of Roe v. Wade—may have consequences far beyond their professional lives. “What should they be considering in their choice of potential employers? How does support for women come into play as a screening criterion for the job search? Those are questions they ought to be asking themselves,” says Shay. “We can’t control the reality of these big companies, but we can sensitize our students to what the world is like and prepare them for the workplace. Hopefully the companies will eventually change.”

SWE itself has taken steps in recent years to become more inclusive of gender diversity. In 2018, the board of directors voted in favor of extending scholarship eligibility to transgender and nonbinary students. Alexa Jakob EE’22, a former president of Cooper’s chapter, served as one of the leaders of SWE’s LGBTQIA+ and allies affinity group, where she pushed for open discussions about gender presentation as part of navigating the workplace. “Creating an environment that’s inclusive for queer folks makes it more inclusive for everyone,” Jakob told SWE Magazine. In response to President Trump’s executive order to cut funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, SWE announced in February that it would “stand resolute” in its commitments to empowering women and advocating for gender parity and equity in STEM. Jakob continues today to work with SWE and other organizations to advocate for women and nonbinary people in engineering. “We belong everywhere, in every professional setting,” she says. “The politicization of diversity, equity, and inclusion does not change that.”

To that end, perhaps the most valuable thing SWE offers to students is a perspective on engineering that extends beyond The Cooper Union. When Ocfemia and a dozen other Cooper SWE members traveled to Los Angeles to attend WE23, the society’s national conference, they discovered chapters from nearby New York City institutions had booked the same flight. “I ended up talking to the president of the NYU chapter on the plane,” she says. “Then we realized students from the City College of New York were sitting right next to us as well, so we all exchanged numbers.” That encounter led to a social mixer the following month hosted at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering.

Ocfemia, who also attended WE24 in Chicago last fall, says the conference’s career fair is a big draw for students, but there are those spontaneous and sometimes intangible benefits as well: “Just seeing a conference packed with women engineers… it’s empowering to know that there are actually a lot of us, and we’re all just trying to make it in this field.”

To commemorate the 75th anniversary of SWE’s founding at Green Camp, The Cooper Union will host a celebration in the Great Hall on May 6, 2025. The event, which is free and open to all, will feature as its keynote speaker astronaut and social media star Kellie Gerardi, who serves as the director of human spaceflight operations for the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences. “I think it’s so appropriate and amazing that The Cooper Union was part of the founding of SWE,” says Shay. “It is just so fitting with the history of Cooper and Peter Cooper’s vision of creating educational opportunity for women.”