Cornell Engineering ranked among nation’s best for women in STEM

In a newly released Washington Monthly ranking of America’s Best and Worst Colleges for Women in STEM, Cornell Engineering departments are listed among the country’s 10 best in every “engineering” category, taking the top spot in electrical engineering and second in chemical engineering.

The publication compared the gender distribution of every STEM program at 1,027 U.S. colleges and universities and ranked the 20 undergraduate programs with the highest and lowest percentage of recent graduates who are female in 10 popular STEM fields. Among Cornell’s placements are:

• #1 in electrical engineering
• #2 in chemical engineering
• #2 in computer and information sciences
• #4 in mechanical engineering
• #10 in computer science
• #10 in civil engineering

Washington Monthly noted that Cornell has, in recent decades, emphasized the importance of recruiting female faculty in engineering.

“On average, just 19.6 percent of tenured and tenure track professors in engineering programs in the U.S. are women, but women made up 29 percent of engineering professors at Cornell last year,” they wrote, crediting the effectiveness of a 2006 ADVANCE grant from the National Science Foundation and the ongoing efforts of the university’s Women in Science and Engineering group.

The 2024 release of the ranking happened to coincide with the 140-year anniversary of the first woman enrolling at Cornell to study engineering and Cornell Engineering’s celebration of its largest-ever cohort of women faculty leaders.