<p>"Of course, there had already been plenty of acclaim for the plan to teach engineering at Smith. The college had been basking in the national spotlight for the past week and a half, ever since the board of trustees, at its spring meeting, had given its blessing to the program. The New York Times had run a laudatory front-page story in which Smith President Ruth J. Simmons, whose strong support for the initiative had been consistent and decisive, spoke of the need for “a critical mass of women moving through engineering together” to topple sexist barriers, explicit or implicit. CNN played up the news, and prominent accounts appeared in newspapers from coast to coast. The San Francisco Chronicle even had an editorial on the subject. “We salute Smith for its bold step into a male-dominated area of study,” it said. “We are confident Smith engineers will be paragons when they begin to graduate in 2004.”</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.smith.edu/newssmith/NSSpring99/cover.html[/url]”>http://www.smith.edu/newssmith/NSSpring99/cover.html</a></p>