Winter 2005

Looking Back at 10 Years of Coeducation
by Dale Long

It took some fatherly advice to convince Abigail Hale that she was making the right choice to become a member of Rose- Hulman Institute of Technology’s 1995 inaugural class of female students. Without hesitation, the soft-spoken man stated: “Abigail, there is a special bond in being the first group of anything.”

As always, father was right.

Those special friendships developed while solving challenging math problems on a new laptop computer, attending formal social parties and making late-night trips to Terre Haute coffeehouses have endured and spread across 441 female graduates during the past seven years.

“I am continually inspired by people who are ‘pioneers’ in their fields . . . it takes someone a little different,” says Kelly Kozdras (Elect. Eng., ’99).“Talking to other women or minorities in engineering or fields where women are not hugely represented, I feel like all of us are trailblazers.”

Nellie Hohne (Mech. Eng., ’99) adds, “I never felt like a trailblazer until I came back to campus for my first homecoming as an alumna. Seeing new female students doing the things that we started (sports, clubs, sororities, etc.) made me realize that being the first female students at Rose-Hulman was an incredible opportunity.”

That opportunity knocked on Oct. 3, 1991, when Rose- Hulman’s Board of Managers voted to approve a coeducational resolution. The action, as reported in The Terre Haute Tribune-Star, ended “the long, controversial debate over coeducation at Rose- Hulman” and “women aspiring to attend one of the best engineering schools in the nation will now be able to realize their dreams.”

After a four-year grace period, the inaugural female freshman class moved into Baur-Sames-Bogart and Mees residence halls on August 26, 1995, and members attended their first classes four days later – under the glare of television cameras and cautious male students.

“Local TV crews filmed us eating breakfast on the first day of school, as if it was breaking news that females eat!” recalled Amber Tolle (Civil Eng., ’99).“But after the first few days, when the cameras went away, it wasn’t such a hot story, things calmed down and it was just college: Lots of hard work and lots of good times.”

Erin Gawron (Chemistry, ’99), now a high school chemistry teacher near Atlanta, Ga., remembers, “The professors made a huge deal out of us being there –- to the point where they pulled us aside to have one of the female faculty talk to us ‘privately’ to tell us that she was there to ‘talk to.’ We didn’t want a fuss, we just wanted to do our math.”

Overall, there were very few problems during that first year – or any time since, according to Donna Gustafson, associate dean for student services and a member of Rose-Hulman’s coed transition team.

“The best advice we got was to treat the female students just like any other students, because, in reality, they were,” she admits. “We must have done something right, because I don’t remember any significant problems.”

Coeducation has left an indelible imprint on Rose- Hulman’s past, present and its future, states Art Western, vice president of academic affairs and dean of faculty. “These have been a wonderful 10 years. All our students have benefited from the institution becoming coed,” he says.

Today, 326 female students make up 18 percent of Rose-Hulman’s undergraduate enrollment –- matching the national percentages of women enrolled in undergraduate engineering and science colleges throughout the United States. Statistics from the college’s Office of Institutional Research, Planning & Assessment reveal that the retention rate of female students has been higher than men for six of the last seven graduating classes.

Four female students (Karen Hill Webster ’01, Elizabeth Huttsell Kappler ’02, Jill Kurdys ’04 and Natalie Morand ‘05) have received the Herman A. Moench Outstanding Senior Commendation; five students (Jodi Barcus McClure ’98, Liza Saunders Davis ’99, Hanna Rumpf Kleeberger ’00,Tonya Cole Combs ’01 and Huttsell Kappler) received the John Royce Award as the college’s outstanding student leader; three female students (Alyssa Riley ‘00, Morand ‘03 and Stefani Vande Lune ‘05) have been elected president of the Student Government Association; and female students have held leadership roles in several campus organizations.

“Having women here challenges the entire student body to be more successful,” says Vande Lune, a senior applied biology major. “There is a lot of good-natured teasing between guys and girls which only inspires students of both sexes to be successful. The girls like to prove they are just as good as the guys, and the guys like to show off for the girls.”

Dana Andre, a sophomore biomedical engineering major, adds, “Coeducation has given Rose-Hulman a more balanced atmosphere, both in the classroom and out. As girls, we socially offer different views and attitudes. Our outlooks often make the males around us stop to think about their views, and what other ones may exist. Academically, females often undergo different thought processes when problem solving. When working together, this brings in many new paths to consider, which can ultimately yield better results.”

Julia Williams, an English professor since 1992 who is also executive director of the office of Institutional Planning, Research and Assessment, notes the significant changes in Rose-Hulman’s educational environment brought about by coeducation. She often asked students in her all-male classes to read essays or works of literature that spoke from a female point of view.

“Before coeducation I was the only person in class that could offer any insights,” she states.“It was a lonely feeling. Now I can look around the room and realize that there are a wealth of opinions, attitudes and perspectives that the class can hear and benefit from.”

And, Rose-Hulman’s female graduates are quick to point out that Rose- Hulman wasn’t ranked No. 1 in U.S. News & World Report’s annual college guide until AFTER coeducation.

“I’m sure that Rose- Hulman was a great school before coeducation, but inviting women to attend Rose-Hulman placed the college in competition with other top-rated institutions,” says Morand, who has just begun her engineering career at Eli Lilly and Company. “The reality is that the world we live in is a diverse place. What better way to teach problem solving than to do so in a diverse and complex environment.”

Morgan Hawker (Civil Eng., ’99) added, “It was an excellent experience for me, as a woman, to be in a male dominated environment like the one I would meet upon graduation while working as an engineer. It was important to me to understand both those that agreed with coeducation, as well as those that didn’t, because everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It is what we do with those opinions and how we react that determine the dynamics of a team and how well it works.”

Finally, Hawker may have summed up the sentiments of all Rose-Hulman female students by stating, “Rose- Hulman was the real trailblazer . . . we were just the lucky byproducts of the decision to go coed.”