Women To Watch 10.12.25 - Flipbook - Page 44
working toward a shared purpose with their
colleagues and that their work contributes to
making a difference in people’s lives.
“It’s a socialization kind of thing. You’re raised
to care for other people,” said Elyse Hill, an aerospace engineer at NASA who had received a CWiT
scholarship to go to UMBC.
CWiT alums like Hill, a Waldorf native, said
the community is tight, often living together on a
designated floor in a dorm, and remaining so after
graduation.
“We traveled in a pack,” she said, “whether it was
doing homework together or just going to dinner.”
While she has had both male and female
mentors, Hill said the latter offered an added
perspective on the experience of being a woman
in a “more impersonal” area like engineering.
Now, she tries to give back by serving as an
industry mentor, speaking on panels and making
herself available to students or those entering the
workforce.
To better understand what would help keep
more women in the field, Gili Freedman, an associate professor of psychology at St. Mary’s College,
wanted to go straight to the source. Her study,
“Dear future women of STEM: letters of advice
from women of STEM,” published in 2023, is
based on advice juniors and seniors majoring in
the sciences were asked to give to their younger
counterparts.
Among the main messages? “Everyone struggles,” Freedman said. “Failure doesn’t make you
a failure.”
Freedman said women in the sciences face
deeply entrenched stereotypes about brilliance. As
early as the age of 6, girls are less likely than boys to
say members of their own gender are “really, really
smart” and start avoiding activities they associate
with braininess.
“We associate STEM fields with brilliance,”
Freedman said, “and society also associates men
with brilliance.”
Carol Wong remembers being told by a classmate at UMCP, where she was in an honors
program and received her bachelor’s degree in
mechanical engineering, that the professor liked
her only because she was female.
“I didn’t fall for that,” said Wong, 39, who was in
an honors program and went on to get a master’s
at Stanford. “I understood the work. I asked questions in class.”
Wong, a senior water resources engineer for
the Fulton-based nonprofit Center for Watershed
Protection, said she’s seen the retention problem for women in STEM up close: About half her
female engineering friends have left the field over
the years.
But that’s not entirely negative, she said.
“People recruit engineers for nonengineering jobs. They like the way engineers think and
process information,” Wong said.
Engineering tends to be less flexible than other
jobs, which can be a factor when a woman decides
to start a family, said Wong, who was born and
YOUR COMMUNITY
YOUR COVERAGE
Get the News You Deserve
SUBSCRIBE TODAY
baltimoresun.com
44 | 2025 | WOMEN TO WATCH
raised in Howard County.
“Your projects are multiyear,” Wong said,
making it harder to “take yourself out of the field.
“There’s still a stigma when you have a gap in
work.”
Although childless herself, she finds that the
nonprofit sector can be more family-friendly and
works with several women who are mothers and
who continue to work, sometimes part time.
Julie J. Park, an education professor at UMCP
who has studied how to retain women in STEM
fields, said there remains a lack of “structural
support for women who want to have families.”
“It’s one step forward, two steps back,” she said.
“There’s greater awareness of the problem … but
you’re fighting against these entrenched cultures.”
LaDawn Partlow grew up in Northeast Baltimore and “didn’t know anything out of Baltimore.”
Luckily, it was enough — she graduated from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and went on to get her
bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical and
computer engineering at Morgan State University,
where she is now director of academic engagement & outreach at its Cybersecurity Assurance
& Policy Center. There, she leads programs to get
middle school students and especially girls interested in STEM.
She might be her own best lesson for the
students.
“With me having strong ties to the community,
there is someone who looks like them and who did
it,” Partlow said. “They feel heard. They feel seen.”
