When Segen Tilahun ’00 applied to the University of Maryland’s engineering school, her peers who were applying to liberal arts schools thought the choice odd.
“They said, ‘You’re studying what?’” Segen said. “They thought I was from a different planet. But I liked math, I liked physics and I wanted a job, so I thought I’d do engineering.”
Times have changed since Segen was at East End Avenue. These days, more girls are showing an interest in engineering, a traditionally male-dominated field.
Four students in the Class of 2008 applied to engineering colleges, said Fran Stillman, head of the math department. The Chapin-Brearley FIRST Robotics team became the first all-female group to compete at the Long Island regional robotics competition last year. And this semester, math teacher Sherman Taishoff is offering Chapin’s first engineering elective. Mr. Taishoff invited Segen to the class to discuss her career.
Though designing roller coasters seemed like an ideal job while Segen was in high school, she took a job with New York City Transit after graduation, and for the past three years has been helping to redesign subway stations.
“When a station is closed down for three years and it’s really annoying, well, that’s because of us,” she joked.
Segen assured the girls that even if they might not love calculus now, math matters. “You can’t underestimate the use of math in engineering,” she said. She also encouraged them to pursue hands-on learning as much as possible, especially in Chapin’s new science labs, which she said are on par with the ones found on college campuses. “Take advantage of every opportunity you can to build something,” she said.
After congratulating the class for its achievements in robotics, Segen said she wished the Chapin-Brearley team had existed when she attended Chapin. “When I got to college, so many people had hands-on robotics experience,” she said. “That really makes a difference.”
Segen said it’s a shock to the system to enter a college classroom of 70 students that includes only three girls, especially coming from an all-girls school like Chapin. And she has found being one of very few females even harder in the workplace than it was at college.
“You have to prove yourself more,” she said.
While she could easily complain about working for a “disorganized city agency,” Segen leaves her office satisfied, knowing that she created “something that will be around for another 50 years or so.”
Her subway renovations will have a lasting presence in New York City, but Segen herself won’t. This month, she is off to work in the construction field in Ethiopia, her parents’ native country, but hopes to return home in a few years.