Coast Guard Academy
U.S. Coast Guard
Feature Story
CGA Among Top Ten Colleges for Women Interested in STEM
By David M. Santos, Communications Director, U.S. Coast Guard Academy
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First Class Cadet Jennifer Brockway, a Marine and Environmental Sciences major at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., poses in a chemistry lab. Brockway was recently placed on the Board of Trustees List, the most prestigious honors list at the Academy, which puts her among the top one percent in the rankings of the more than 1,000 cadets here. U.S. Coast Guard photograph by Petty Officer 1st Class NyxoLyno Cangemi |
U.S. Dept. of Labor projections show nine of the 10 fastest-growing occupations that require at least a college education, will also require considerable training in science or mathematics. But even though more than half of all college students are women, as reported by the American Council on Education, they make up only 20% of all engineering majors.
One of the nation’s top colleges for women interested in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM), according to rankings recently published by Forbes.com, is the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. ‘Full Ranking: Best Colleges For Women And Minorities In STEM’ published last month, placed the New London, Conn., based institution among the top 10 schools that help women succeed in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, the only service academy to make the list.
Of the 400 schools that made the Forbes’ ranking of America’s Best Colleges (nine percent of the 6,600 accredited postsecondary institutions in the U.S.), some colleges where overall STEM populations were extremely small and where men obtained STEM degrees at very low rates were excluded. Forbes ranked the remaining schools based on how closely they approached an ideal where STEM classrooms were representative of the student body overall. So if the institution's student body were 60% female and 40% male, a 20-person engineering class should have 12 female students and eight male.
"The connectivity of all of our academic majors to the day-to-day operations of the Coast Guard offers a unique venue for our cadets to make their academy experience come to life," adds Kurt Colella, Dean of Academics here. "Whether it's studying the organizational challenges of the tragic earthquake in Haiti, or assisting with the mitigation of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a Coast Guard Academy education is real, relevant and at the forefront of serving those in need."
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