Repository: UIHistories Project: SWE - News Clippings Book [PAGE 7]

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Engineering Career Is Happy Choice

Betty Lou Bailey Although less than one per cent of American engineers are women, the front door is now open for girls eyeing such a career, and engineer Betty Lou Bailey '50 urges them to walk in. Betty Lou, who spoke at the annual meeting of the Engineering Alumni Council on campus this fall, is in the spacecraft department of the General Electric Valley Forge Space Technology Center. She has to her credit a patent on a jet engine part and extensive experience in engine design. She entered college determined to be an engineer •—her father was chief engineer for the Chicago Bridge and Iron Co. — and now appreciates the fact that her U. of I. professors never singled her out. "Once a properly qualified girl gets headed into engineering she should be left alone. After she graduates she has to perform to the same standards as anyone else and it wouldn't be fair to the girl to give her special attention in college," she told the alumni. After Betty Lou received her degree in mechanical engineering as the only coed in an engineering j class of 1,055, she went to work 'for General Electric at the large jet engine department at Evendale, Ohio. In 1960 she was transferred to the staff of the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory where she was a control mechanisms engineer on a project for the design and development of twin nuclear reactors for the Navy's first atomic powered destroyer. At Valley Forge she is mainly concerned with the design of the Nimbus weather satellite, working on the adapter and payload separation system which goes between the Nimbus, a successor of Tiros, and its booster. Besides providing mental stimulation, an engineering career gives, she says, a sense of physical accomplishment in producing "something which is real, and part of it seems yours." America has so few women engineers, compared to Russia's many, she believes1, because of poor counseling of girls who show aptitude in mathematics and science. Kathie Miller, a metallurgical engineering junior from Fairfield who was guided by her high school counselor into engineering studies, also spoke to the group, which included many high school principals and counselors as guests. Present too was Grace Wilson '31, M.S. '43, associate professor of general engineering, who is sponsor of the organization formed for the 31 coeds now in engineering at the U. of I. Although devoted to engineering studies as an undergraduate, Betty Lou Bailey did not permit extracurricular interests to pass her by. She was associate editor of the Illio, a member of the Panhellenic Executive Council, on Mini Union committees and in the a cappella choir, and was elected to Pi Tau Sigma and Mortar Board honoraries. ~°

December 1962

Illinois Alumni News