School Notes: School of Engineering & Applied Science
July/August 2012

Graduate students receive national fellowships

Yale environmental engineering’s doctoral program will welcome six first-year students this fall, with the entire entering class having received highly competitive external research fellowships. Four of the students received National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships, given to outstanding graduate students based on demonstrated potential for achievement in science and engineering. The foundation has received more than half a million applications for the fellowship since 1952, with less than 10 percent receiving awards; for the upcoming academic year, just 2,000 fellowships were offered nationally. Two of the students received graduate research fellowships from the Environmental Protection Agency. Founded in 1995, the EPA’s STAR (Science to Achieve Results) program is designed to engage the country’s best scientists and engineers in targeted research, and has awarded about 1,500 fellowships—fewer than 100 per year.

Challenging national trends

A Yale chapter of the Society for Women Engineers has been reestablished, with both undergraduate and graduate students participating in meetings and events throughout the year, and the chapter being represented at the SWE regional conference. An active SWE chapter at Yale reflects the success of SEAS in engaging women in engineering: nationwide, about 18 percent of bachelor’s degrees in engineering were awarded to women in 2011; at Yale, that number reached 31 percent. The school boasts similar numbers for engineering doctoral degrees, with 33 percent of Yale degrees awarded to women, compared to less than 22 percent nationally in 2011. These numbers reflect a sustained trend at the school that defies national trends in engineering enrollment: over the past five years, while the percentage of women enrolled in undergraduate engineering programs struggled to reach 18 percent nationally, Yale Engineering’s undergraduate enrollment has been well over 30 percent female and reached a high of nearly 40 percent in 2011.