About WTP in ME

The Women’s Technology Program was originally created in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 2002 to address the problem of the lack of women pursuing higher education in the fields of electrical engineering and computer science. It was thought that a lack of exposure to the subject area and lack of female role models in EECS for high school students could have an impact on their choice of field.

WTP in Mechanical Engineering was developed in the summer of 2006 in an attempt to curtail a trend that is arguably worse than the one in EECS – at the time at MIT itself, fewer than 5% of the PhD candidates in Mechanical Engineering were women. By exposing high school students to the broad range of subject areas encompassed by Mechanical Engineering, we hope to correct the common misconception that ME is just about robots, cars, airplanes, and machines.

At present, WTP is a women-focused, collaborative community aimed at empowering students from groups historically underrepresented and underserved in engineering. We especially encourage students to apply who will be the first family member to attend college, who come from high schools with limited access to STEM classes and activities, or who are African American, Hispanic, or Native American. 

Why Mechanical Engineering?

Automobiles and robots are two of the main types of projects commonly associated with mechanical engineering. However, the types of research projects that fall under the title "mechanical engineering" can encompass anything from artificial silk to biomedical devices, as well as microfluids and alternative power!