You’ve probably heard how Viterbi has achieved gender parity “it’s something really important to us” blah blah. That’s great, but how does that statistic translate into experience?
One of the best things I think Viterbi has accomplished has been how normal it is for engineering to reflect the populations around us. We don’t really harp too much on the number of women in engineering in the day-to-day — because that’s what we know, and what it should be.
That being said, for a lot of us in high school, that wasn’t the case; as a result, Viterbi still has resources in place to support women in engineering. We have a large, student-run Society of Women Engineers chapter, but Viterbi also runs Women in Engineering (WIE). They run a lot of really cool events and a fantastic mentorship program — my freshman year mentor and I still keep in touch all the time even though she’s since graduated!
There’s also a plethora of other clubs like Women in Computing and AthenaHacks that a lot of engineering students join. Every year, AthenaHacks hosts a hackathon open to marginalized gender identities, which I got to cover one year for the CS department.
Another source of inspiration for me is the faculty and graduate students that are women, since they really showcase how far we can go! For example, Gabilan professors are outstanding professors at USC in science and engineering — I’ve personally interacted with multiple Gabilan professors such as Heather Culbertson and Swabha Swaymdipta for one reason or another. I also got to interview Ph.D. student Brihi Joshi for an article after she was named a 2024 Apple Scholar!
Coming from a STEM-focused high school where only 40% of the students were women, I genuinely do feel represented and welcomed at Viterbi as a woman in engineering, and I hope you get to experience that here or anywhere else you go 🫶