Another glass ceiling has been shattered: 2016 marks the first time a US national research university's graduating class of engineering undergraduates is over 50% female. This is in striking contrast to national data that show that over the past decade, less than 20% of US engineering bachelor's degrees have been awarded to women.

Clearly, Dartmouth's Thayer School is doing something right to attract so many women undergraduates to engineering—and keep them there.

"We have been working hard to think about the barriers, for all students, to pursuing an engineering degree," says Dartmouth engineering dean Joseph Helble. "And then doing everything we can to give students a clear path to overcoming those barriers."

"There is a tremendous amount of talent that is not being tapped to solve the science and technology problems the world faces," continues Helble. "There are enormous challenges in energy, the environment, in health care, in communications… and we need to put as many creative engineering minds toward solving them as we can."

Engineering major Shinri Kamei '16 is a member of Dartmouth's first graduating engineering class that is over 50% female.