When Joanna Boyd arrived at Utah State University several years ago, she thought she wanted to major in statistics because she enjoyed it so much in high school.
But her thoughts about that subject later changed.
“I felt like I got stuck with statistics (because) I’d do the data crunching and that was it — I had to provide those results to someone else,” Boyd said. “Whereas engineering, I get to take those results and actually do something about it.”
So Boyd switched her major to mechanical engineering. Set to graduate next year, she has her mind set on a job in the field at a time when women make up less than a quarter of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) jobs in Utah.
Not only that, but advocacy organizations, including the Women Tech Council, say retaining young women like Boyd in STEM majors and getting them to graduate with such a degree is difficult.