Volpe Center and WPI-Promoting Women in Technology
The Volpe Center's Jayne Rossetti, left, and fellow female student Lesley (Small) Zorabedian on the WPI campus in 1968. (
Photo courtesy of WPI)
Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), in Worcester, Massachusetts has recently marked the 40th anniversary of its first coeducational class. Jayne Rossetti, an IT Specialist in the Volpe Center's Navigation and Surveillance Division, entered WPI in the fall of 1968. She was just one of two female students when the institution became coeducational after 100 years. Jayne left in her junior year to join the U.S. Navy and finished her degree in computer science at Boston University in 1984.
When Jayne first stepped on campus that first year, the school offered no residence halls for women so she lived in a dorm at a local secretarial school. "The greatest difficulty the first year was finding restrooms!" Jayne recalls today. "I was fortunate to have been adopted by a group of seven fellow freshmen who really looked out for me. There were over twenty female students the next year and half of a dormitory floor was converted to a female residence hall. We felt more a part of the community once we were living on campus."
Today, two other Volpe Center employees, Charlotte Song and Elizabeth Tyree, both Aerospace Engineers in the Volpe Center's Navigation and Surveillance Division, have ties to WPI. Charlotte completed a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering–Aerospace in 1990 and a PHD in Mechanical Engineering–Fluid Mechanics at Georgia Tech in 1993. Elizabeth is currently in the MS Program in the Physics Department at WPI and expects to graduate in 2011.
Jayne, right, today with colleagues Charlotte Song and Elizabeth Tyree. They are part of a well established and respected group of Volpe Center staff with WPI ties. (
Volpe Center photo)
