Former GE Chairman Provides Gift
To Fund New UC Center for Women Engineers

Using the Women in Discovery exhibit as a backdrop, former GE Aircraft Engine Chairman Brian Rowe announced a $300,000 gift to fund a new center for women in the College of Engineering. The Rowe Center for Women Engineers will be housed in Baldwin Hall when it reopens later this year.

The Rowe Center will provide a comprehensive program to support undergraduate recruitment, retention and post-graduate mentoring for women engineers at UC. The center will begin operations in early 2002 and expand over three years to offer various workshops, leadership programs, career-planning sessions and to serve as an information resource about the field of engineering.

"The best opportunity for increasing enrollment in the College of Engineering is to enroll women in our programs. Nationally, only 25 percent of undergraduate engineering students are women," noted Stephen Kowel, Dean of Engineering. "The Rowe Center will enable us to provide programs, starting at the junior high level and continuing through the university experience, to encourage students to pursue math and science courses, to consider engineering as a career."

Rowe's personal interest in bringing more students to the field of engineering led to the center's creation. Rowe based his decision on his strong belief that the field of engineering needs to attract more students who are exposed to engineering at earlier times in their education. Rowe's interest in engineering education is a long-standing one. In addition to the Rowe Center, he has also established a student exchange program for engineering students at the College of Engineering and Newcastle University in the UK.

"The generosity of Brian Rowe in establishing the Rowe Center extends his long tradition of support for the College of Engineering, which includes research funding in the department of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics and funds supporting an undergraduate student exchange program with the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in England," said Dean Kowel.

Information about the Rowe Center will be available at the College of Engineering's booth at the Women in Discovery Exhibit: The Legacy of Marie Curie at Raymond Walters College. This special traveling program serves to motivate high school and junior high students' interest and awareness in science and math education in high school and college.

The Women in Discovery exhibit is in the Flory Center on the Raymond Walters campus. It runs through Nov. 9, 2001.