Women in Leadership Positions

The 2019 Profiles of Engineering and Engineering Technology Colleges survey instrument was edited to allow institutions to provide gender, race, and ethnicity characteristics of engineering program leaders and institutional leaders. Out of 360 institutions, 138 institutions shared demographic information for nearly 1,900 individuals within university leadership positions. The figure below shows the percentage of women holding various leadership positions, either within engineering programs or institutions. Among provosts and vice-provosts, 50 percent or more were women. Within engineering programs, the highest percentages of women in leadership roles were assistant deans (i.e.,43%) and associate deans (i.e., 31%). Both positions have higher percentages of women working in those roles than the percentage of women in engineering faculty positions. However, only 13 percent of department heads and chairs within engineering programs were women. Among tenured/tenure-track faculty for 2019, women comprised 24.5% of assistant professors, 20.8% of associate professors and 13.1% of full professors.