Glenda La Rue, director of Ohio State’s Women in Engineering program, has been appointed president-elect of the Women in Engineering ProActive Network (WEPAN), a national organization and catalyst for transforming culture in engineering education to promote the success of all women.

La Rue joined Ohio State in 2003 after working more than ten years as a water resources engineer for government agencies (Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, Tennessee Valley Authority and the City of Columbus) and a private consulting company (Killam Associates [now Hatch Mott MacDonald]). She earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in civil engineering from Virginia Tech.

Over the years, La Rue has created several innovative programs and initiatives to further the mission of increasing the number of women in engineering at Ohio State. These include a group mentoring program that clusters undergraduate students with professional engineers, two annual Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day programs, two new pre-college summer camps, and a new freshmen early arrival program that integrates Ohio State's women in engineering learning community and a freshman survey course that La Rue teaches.

Under her leadership, the number of undergraduate women engineering students at Ohio State has increased from just over 600 to over 1000 students (from 13.9 to 16 percent of the engineering undergraduate population), and in the last three years, women have made up at least 20 percent of the incoming freshmen class of engineering students. Every year, WiE's retention, recruitment, and outreach programs serve more current and future students, and this year she expects the programs to log well over 2000 participants.

Beyond her role as director of WiE, La Rue serves as the university liaison to the National Science Foundation's "Engage Engineering" grant (www.engageengineering.org), on the College of Engineering Diversity Committee, on the internal advisory council for Ohio State's Project CEOS (Comprehensive Equity at Ohio State – http://ceos.osu.edu), and is the advisor for Ohio State's Society of Women Engineers student organization.