Smith President to Address Leading Women in Engineering and Technology

Smith College President Ruth J. Simmons will present a keynote address at 12 noon Monday, September 27, at Women In Technology International's "East Coast Technology Summit" at the John B. Hynes Convention Center in Boston.

Simmons will address the critical need -- and opportunities -- for women in engineering and technical fields and the imperative for new ways to educate women so that they persist in these careers. She will also discuss Smith's newly established engineering program, the first such program at a women's college.

Simmons, who assumed the Smith presidency in 1995, is a longstanding advocate for women in non-traditional fields. Under her direction, the college established in February the Picker Program in Engineering and Technology, an effort both to increase the number of women engineers in the United States and to provide significant new opportunities for Smith graduates. Smith's first engineering majors are expected to graduate in 2004. Once all program areas are established, the college expects to enroll 100 engineering majors at any one time, graduating approximately 25 women per year.

Simmons is actively involved in a wide range of educational and civic endeavors and serves on numerous boards, including Pfizer, Inc., Metropolitan Life Insurance, and Texas Instruments, Inc. She is a member of the advisory board for the Gates Millennium Scholars Program and of the board advising the director of the National Institutes of Health. In the past several years, she has spoken at the White House and the Massachusetts House of Representatives and has addressed such groups as the National Association of Engineers and the National Urban League.

September 23, 1999