Lois Graham (known early in her career as Lois Graham McDowell or Lois G. McDowell) (1925 – November 4, 2013) was a professor of thermodynamics and cryogenics. She was the first woman to earn a mechanical engineering PhD in the United States. Graham is remembered for her lifelong work recruiting young women into careers in science and engineering. She taught for nearly 40 years in the Illinois Institute of Technology's Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering program. Graham founded IIT's Women in Science and Engineering program, which recruited female high school students into science and engineering careers.
Early life and education Graham was born in 1925 and grew up in Troy, New York, one of three siblings. She initially wanted to be a doctor but could not afford medical school. An admirer of Amelia Earhart, Graham also wanted to be a pilot or flight attendant, but those professions at the time had height limitations of 5'3" and weight limitations of 125 pounds. "Well, unfortunately," Graham said in an interview, "I outgrew that career." Interested in aviation, Graham considered aerospace engineering, but as with medical school, she could not afford the tuition.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute By the time she graduated from high school in the spring of 1942, Graham had settled on attending a state college for teachers in nearby Albany, NY. That summer, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), where Graham's father taught, announced that it would admit female students for the first time, and children of employees could attend for free. Graham enrolled, first attending summer classes, and then enrolling full-time, one of the first four women to be admitted. She followed an accelerated schedule that was available during World War II. Graham became one of the first two women to graduate with a degree at RPI (Class of 1946), and the first woman from the university to graduate with a degree in mechanical engineering.
Illinois Institute of Technology After graduating from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Graham worked as a test engineer at the Carrier Corporation, leaving after 18 months to pursue a master's degree. According to Graham, she was turned away by MIT (who requested "every single textbook I had used when I was in college and every portion of that textbook I had covered"), Caltech (who sent her a postcard stating, "We do not accept women"), and the University of Illinois (who told her, "we cannot accept out-of-state students at this time"), but was offered a teaching assistantship by the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT).I was at Carrier for a year and a half, and I think after about a year I was starting to get bored. I didn't feel I had enough responsibility. And so I talked to my immediate boss and told him that. And he said, "Well, you're too young." Too young? (Laughs) Well, I don't know whether that was the real reason or not, but in any case, I figured, all right, I'm going to go back to school and get older.
Degrees awarded Bachelor of Science, Mechanical Engineering (B.S.ME), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1946 Master of Science, Mechanical Engineering (M.S.ME), Illinois Institute of Technology, 1949 Doctor of Philosophy, Mechanical Engineering (Ph.D.ME), Illinois Institute of Technology, 1959
Career
In 1949, Graham became the first female faculty member in IIT's engineering department, and the first female graduate student accepted into its Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering program. IIT had to make an adjustment upon her arrival: converting a small closet into a ladies restroom. Later that year, Graham earned a master's degree in mechanical engineering, the first woman at IIT to do so. Even early in her career, Graham received attention for being a woman in a male-dominated field. In September 1953, Graham was featured in Popular Science, which ran a picture of her, identified as "Lois G. McDowell," with the caption:
A WOMAN ENGINEER, Lois G. McDowell, teaches thermodynamics at Illinois Tech. She is glad that other women, at her school and elsewhere, are studying to become engineers.
SWE and Women in Engineering Graham was a fellow life member of the Society of Women Engineers, which she joined in 1952, two years after it was founded. At SWE, Graham's work focused on increasing the number of women pursuing careers in engineering, science, and math. She wrote articles published by SWE advocating for improving the career counseling available to young women, and for increasing the recruitment of young women into the engineering field in order to end a shortage of engineers in the country. To bolster her arguments, Graham marshaled allies by citing other influential people from outside academia who had spoken favorably about women in engineering. For example, in one article, Graham employed a quote by Arthur Sherwood Flemming (then the Director of the Office of Defense Mobilization, and later US President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare), in which he said, "[W]e haven't got a chance in the world of taking care of that deficit of engineers... unless we get women headed in the direction of engineering schools." Graham argued that young women could not only help themselves, but also help their country, by pursuing careers in engineering. Graham served as SWE's fourth national president from 1955 until 1956. In 1955, SWE released a 40-page report entitled Women in Engineering, aimed at influencing how female engineers were viewed by the public. Graham has said in an interview that an early title under consideration for the booklet was "Petticoats and Slide Rules." The report listed accredited engineering programs, their curricula and prerequisites. It also included information about scholarships for women, statistics about women in the engineering field, and suggested reading lists. SWE distributed the Women in Engineering booklet to over 400 high schools around the United States, as well as colleges and universities, corporations and government agencies, and engineering societies. Ultimately, the enthusiastic response led to SWE running out of copies of Women in Engineering, and a new edition was issued in 1958.
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