According to a U.S. Department of Education report, “Trends in Educational Equity of Girls and Women,” women earned only 9 percent of all the bachelor’s degrees in business management and administrative services 30 years ago. By 1985, the percentage had increased to 45 percent, and in 1996, women earned more than 48 percent of all business bachelor’s degrees.

“In the ’70s, women started taking an interest in business careers,” Sinclair-Colando says. “Then it was in the ’80s that we really started to see a change, where women were just flocking to business.”

Sinclair-Colando, who has been with the university for about 20 years, says she thinks the change in women’s career choices is because the outlook of female students has changed.

“Attitudes of young women are becoming more like those of young men,” she says. “Part of that may be due to the fact that my generation didn’t compete in sports. We did all the female things. I think young women have learned to be more competitive, and that’s important in the business world.”

Female students appear to be joining some of the programs that were traditionally male-dominated. The only school at Kent State that still has a large majority of men is technology, with 402 men and only 69 women.

“There are maybe one or two in a class,” says senior technology major Anthony Ralph. “This one girl is really advanced — way above the rest of the guys, and she’s going to graduate No. 1. It’s very rare, though, because you never see any girls in class.”

Ralph says he thinks women may have misconceptions about the college.

“I think a lot of women may feel it only has to do with construction or something like that because of lot of the classes fit into that stuff,” he says. “I think they may be intimidated, but there’s no reason that any woman couldn’t do it. Like that woman I was talking about, she’s going to graduate way over me. Some women may have an interest in it, but they see how many males are in the class, and they may feel weird,” Ralph adds.

Shaup, whom Ralph is talking about, says she thinks most women aren’t interested in the kind of work involved in technology, a field similar to engineering.

“From my personal view, I don’t feel that women really want to work with their hands,” she says. “It’s more labor-intensive, and it’s more hands-on. I love it. It’s great, and the professors are really nice.”

Shaup says most of the professors are male, but only one of them acted as though he thought women didn’t belong in the program.

“He was kind of older, and he was set in his ways, and he felt women shouldn’t really be here,” she says. “But other than that, all of the other professors have been great.”