Michelle Bothwell works for changes in the engineering field

Women of Achievement:

The Women's Center at Oregon State University is honoring extraordinary local residents as part of its annual "Women of Achievement" celebration.

This year's honorees are Joanne Apter, Michelle Bothwell and Marie Harvey, along with Nancy O'Mara and Mehra Shirazi, who were featured in a front-page stories in Tuesday's and Wednesday's editions. Apter and Harvey will be featured in stories on Friday.

The Women of Achievement awards ceremony is from 3:30 to 5 p.m. Friday in the Women's Center on campus.

By BENNETT HALL
Gazette-Times business editor

In her undergraduate days at Purdue University, Michelle Bothwell would often be the only woman in an engineering class of 50 students. Raised to believe she could achieve anything she set her mind to, she paid little attention to the disparity at the time.

Now 37, an associate professor in the chemical engineering department at Oregon State University with a 21-month-old son at home and a daughter due in August, she sees things a little differently.

Women remain under-represented in the engineering profession in this country, along with blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans, and Bothwell is determined to do something about it.

"It didn't really hit me, these gender

inequalities, until I got more experience," she said. "For me, these issues of social justice have evolved to a place where that's where my heart is."

Bothwell has become a force for change, helping to lead women and minority recruitment efforts at OSU's College of Engineering, creating and teaching two courses on engineering ethics and presenting her views at academic conferences. For her efforts, she has been named one of five Women of Achievement for 2005 by the OSU Women's Center Advisory Board.

In her class on bioengineering ethics, Bothwell urges her students to examine the assumptions inherent in a field long dominated by white males.

"There's different fallouts from that," Bothwell said. "Engineers are involved in all kinds of technologies that impact human beings, but they're doing it from the perspectives, through the lenses, of white men."

Heart monitors provide a cautionary example of how those lenses can lead to bad engineering. The widely used medical devices, Bothwell said, had to be modified to work for all heart patients.

"In order to see anomalies (in heart function), you have to have a baseline data set, and that data set ... was based on white males who were 55," she said. "So you were getting a lot of false outputs coming through."

In her social ethics class, Bothwell explores issues of environmental racism in engineering, such as the recommendation to site a massive nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. While the decision may have been based on solid engineering, Bothwell said, it ignored the impact on the Western Shoshone tribe, which considers the mountain sacred.

The profession needs more of that kind of thinking, said Ron Adams, dean of the College of Engineering, and Bothwell's pioneering classes are a mark of distinction for OSU.

"To have specific courses like that is pretty uncommon," he said.

Ellen Momsen, who heads up recruiting and retention efforts for women and minority students in the College of Engineering, said Bothwell is also having an impact outside the classroom. By co-directing a summer program for high school students and giving youth science workshops, she plays a critical part in the college's outreach efforts.

"Only about eight percent of professional engineers are women, so a lot of times girls don't see themselves as engineers," Momsen said. "I think having role models like Michelle is really important, from junior high all the way up through graduate school."

Bothwell says she always tells young people the truth about the cultural hurdles they may face in engineering. But even though she sometimes finds the pace of change frustratingly slow, Bothwell sees her profession becoming more inclusive, and she feels good about that.

"I think about my daughter, this little to-be daughter, and I believe that if she decides to be an engineer, she'll have a better experience than I did."

Bennett Hall is the business editor for the Gazette-Times. He can be reached at 758-9529 or bennett.hall@lee.net.