Program Marks 50 Years of Women at Wentworth
Photos by Darlene DeVita
Wentworth Institute of Technology held its 15th annual Women @ Wentworth event on March 31, honoring woman-identifying student leaders and presenting the Woman of the Year award. This year’s event was particularly special as it marked 50 years since the first women were admitted to the university.
“Know your history,” urged Vice President of Equity and Inclusion Nicole Price, establishing the theme of the day.
In a poignant moment, President Mark Thompson acknowledged audience member Susan Hardt, Building Construction Technology ’74, who was among the first class of women to enroll at the university in 1972, before reflecting on Wentworth’s past and hopes for the future.
“We continue to see growth in our recruitment of [woman-identifying] students,” Thompson remarked. “Almost forty percent of our undergraduate applicants last year identified as women. This is encouraging news; [and] more importantly, it gives us momentum as we strive towards our goal of increasing these numbers by fifty percent over the next five years.”
Women currently make up only twenty-two percent of the total student population, and some majors and fields remain even more unbalanced in regard to gender, as student speaker and Women @ Wentworth Scholarship recipient Catherine “Cat” Roden, Construction Management ’24, pointed out.
“Having been around construction from a young age, I didn’t realize how stigmatized being a woman in the field still is,” she remarked. “I hope to serve as a future role model for women and inspire them to pursue their career of choice without limitations. It’s time for women to break the barrier.”
This was also a theme for keynote speaker and 2022 Woman of the Year Sharmi Albrechtsen, the CEO and co-founder of SmartGurlz. In her remarks, Albrechtsen described the challenges she faced in securing venture funding as a female founder and reflected on her journey as an entrepreneur.
“There are a lot of decisions [to make] along the way about what your product is and what it represents and who you want to be as a founder,” Albrechtsen said. “I had to stick by what I felt the mission of the company was—and it wasn’t to make a fun scooter that ran around, it was to make a fun scooter that ran around that you learned from and that actually gave you something because it needed to change the world.”
Albrechtsen is well on her way to achieving her goal. To date, SmartGurlz has helped educate more than 60,000 students. “If we look at tech jobs, only 29% are being taken by women today. If we look at tech leadership, we only have 17%,” Albrectsen said. “We have to do more.”
To that end, Associate Provost for Transformation Learning and Partnerships Dr. Susan Duffy—serving as the event’s emcee—formally announced the expansion of the “Women @ Wentworth” brand to include current and planned programs that recruit and retain woman-identifying students at every stage in their educational journey, beginning with grades K through 12 and continuing past college to support them in their professional lives.
“There is substantial social science that confirms that when we feel like we ‘fit in,’ and we each get to define that for ourselves, we thrive,” said Duffy. “Our psychological safety goes up, our identity threat goes down, our trust of each other is quickly heightened and we build self-efficacy, that sense in our gut that we can do whatever is in front of us.”
