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By Dominique Cambou

Graduation finally came after six years of physics boot camp. I sat in the Physics Math Astronomy library, waiting to receive my diploma and a paperback copy of Dreams of a Final Theory, autographed by Steven Weinberg himself. But honestly Weinberg never truly affected my desire to learn the Laws. My mentors and role models were the people that directly shared their love of physics with me. I was driven to study physics by the moments of victorious epiphany that only come after long hours of sweating blood to understand a bit of Mother Nature.

However the students graduating that day overcame much more than the challenge of learning physics; they won a hard fight against the notoriously ambivalent University of Texas. No grade inflation here, just cold competition and wrong answers in the back of the textbook. And then there were five of us quietly admitting to yet another barrier: being a woman in a field dominated by men. As we climb the ladder, gaining experience and confidence, we continue to face society's anxiety towards women in science. Either threatened or overly impressed by us, people don't know where in society we belong. Increasingly I seek out other women that channel through the barriers and know that being a scientist is really no big deal. UT's Physics, Math, and Astronomy departments need to catch up and join the fight against cultural stereotypes.

Math at UT receives on average an equal amount of men and women during freshman year. Between 1999 and 2003, women in the math department constituted a majority of the freshman class but a minority of the senior class. Through 2004, they remained in the minority at all levels. Astronomy faces a similar problem of loosing female students along the way towards graduation. Math and Astronomy receive sufficient numbers of women into their undergraduate programs but for one reason or another, women drop out before their senior year. In addition, undergraduate women in these departments tend to choose their major's Bachelor of Arts and teaching options over the Bachelor of Science option. Thus many women are lost at the jump between bachelor and graduate degrees, leaving young math and astronomy students with few prospects for female role models. These departments cannot use the excuse that women are simply not enrolling into their programs. They must become more aware of where all these women are going.

A tiny 15% of physics freshmen undergraduates are women. These women tend to stick around until graduation, though with a slightly higher drop out rate than men during junior year. Unlike the women in astronomy and math, most of the women in physics choose the B.S. option over the teaching or B.A. degree and come out more prepared to continue a career in academia. Female physics majors stay in physics for the long run but there are simply not enough of them. The responsibility to change this statistic doesn't end at the high school level; the university can help create more interest in physics among women already in college. With better introductory classes, where students still decide the course of their education, the UT -Physics department could broaden student diversity.

It's a tricky problem to pinpoint the reasons behind the numbers of dwindling women in the sciences. Perhaps it's due to a lack of role models - both male and female - or to the little encouragement and much discouragement from society, family, and peers. Sociologists and psychologists provide countless theories, but the number of ideas and proactive policies towards change within the RLM building are scattered and insufficient. Currently the focus is on recruitment. Efforts to attract more women faculty is slowly emerging but the effects are negligible. In my six years at UT, I never took a course from a woman in physics, math, or any other science. There are only two female theoretical physics professors at UT and zero in experimental physics.

Director of Women in Natural Science Bev Vandergrif says, "It does take time to build up a better faculty, but it shouldn't take this much time." Along with advising the science departments on hiring more women faculty, Women in Natural Sciences provides mentorship programs, discussion courses, and a women's honors dorm for undergraduate women in science. WINS understands that attracting and keeping women in science goes beyond recruiting.

One of the few proactive departments at UT is the Computer Science department. Dr. Lavender, Associate Director of Student Affairs for CS is currently pushing for several new initiatives. The First Bytes program gives high school girls an opportunity to learn about computer science at UT. A new course this fall will include different teaching styles such as 'pair programming' where students work in groups rather than the traditional 'single geek effort'. The department wants to assign more women teaching assistants to introductory level classes. Another idea is to create classes that incorporate CS with other fields such as Biology, Finance, and Engineering. Dr. Lavender is not reluctant to make changes within the department stating, "The problem is not the field of computer science, it's us, the faculty. We need to change."

There's plenty beyond recruitment that the Physics, Math, and Astronomy departments could be trying out. As students set the initial conditions for their scientific lives, the University should pay more attention to student needs and ask for their input. But with overcrowded classrooms, multiple-choice exams, and professors that think teaching is a distraction from their research, the culture at UT places student concerns last.

As a student, don't be afraid to ask questions and let professors know what you think about their classes. Woman students should encourage each other because too often when we find ourselves in the minority, we compete against each other. Instead, we should find commonality in our struggle to break cultural stereotypes while we continue to set and achieve our own goals.