The incoming class at Rose- Hulman Institute of Technology represents the largest class of female students ever. Of the 565 new students, 172 are women.
That's an increase of 40 students over last year, continuing a trend where the school keeps breaking its own enrollment record.
"Well actually we've broken that record consecutively for five years, but it's been very incremental. By half a dozen, two's, three's," says Jim Goecker, vice president for enrollment and strategic communications. "But this year's increase of nearly forty is really pretty astounding."
Goecker attributes the increase to an ongoing effort to recruit more women into Science, Technology, Engineering and Math or STEM fields. A group of female students formed an organization Women of Like Fields Passionate About Computing (WOLF PAC).
"I think there was a hunger out there among young women to identify with this and feel connected through some sort of effort," Goecker says.
The National Science Foundation reports that women receive only about 18 percent of bachelor's degrees awarded annually in computer science, but women make up more than a third of all incoming computer science majors at Rose-Hulman this year.
Goecker says about 20 percent of faculty at Rose-Hulman are women.
The engineering school has ranked as the nation's top undergraduate engineering school for 17 years in a row.