Kathleen Baumgardner knew there was a problem when female enrollment at CSU’s College of Engineering dipped below the national average in 2007 and hit an all-time low.

So Baumgardner, director of Strategic Communications at CSU, and then-Dean Sandra Woods set out to fix the situation. They began an initiative that year to draw more women and other under-represented groups to the college.

The women decided, “‘We have to do something about this,’” she said.

Baumgardner first wanted to learn why CSU had failed to enroll women in the college. She conducted surveys of students and found that the college was sending the wrong message.

She learned that women and men held different attitudes toward engineering. But in discussions with prospective students, it had promoted engineering to women in the same way it had for men.

“Women, we found, were a bit less connected with the actual field of engineering than men were and more interested in messages about the difference that they could make with engineering,” she said. “It’s more about how they could improve our environment, how they could solve problems regarding energy, how they could