Diverse: Issues in Higher Education spotlights Sweet Briar’s engineering program

Isabel Joyner ’20 poses after learning she’d earned an internship at Boeing. Isabel was later hired by Boeing’s Research and Technology division as a propulsion engineer for the Artemis program, working to put the first woman and next man on the moon by 2024.


Diverse: Issues in Higher Education—a newsmagazine that focuses on access and opportunity for all in higher education—recently interviewed President Meredith Woo and engineering professor Bethany Brinkman to learn how the College creates an ideal learning environment for the next generation of female engineers.

To President Woo, the Margaret Jones Wyllie ’45 Engineering Program offers a “culture of empowerment and encouragement. It has a very different kind of ethos while being as rigorous as engineering classes that you might find any place else.”

“Employers routinely say that our students are comfortable getting their hands dirty,” says Professor Brinkman. “They’re confident. I think that is where it comes out. In other words, they have already done engineering. So, they just step right into the workplace.”

Read the article:
“Sweet Briar College Seeks to Foster Ideal Learning Environment for Next Generation of Female Engineers”

Students meet Dr. Christine Darden, one of the NASA scientists profiled in the bestselling book Hidden Figures. Darden was the 2018 keynote speaker at the Central Virginia National Engineers Week Banquet celebration, which is hosted by Sweet Briar.