After the LSU College of Science saw a 46 percent increase in undergraduate applicants from the year before, Dean Cynthia Peterson was named one of Baton Rouge Business Report’s 2018 Influential Women in Business.
Peterson graduated from the University in 1979 and became the first female dean of the College of Science in 2014.
Peterson learned her love for science as a teenager, crediting her junior high teachers for making science an exciting challenge.
“I had a teacher who once said, ‘you think this is hard? You just wait until you get into college and do organic chemistry,’” Peterson said. “That planted a seed, and I was like ‘okay, I’ll go to college and take organic chemistry.’”
Although the STEM field is predominantly male, Peterson found that being a woman in STEM is an opportunity. She said she’s doing whatever she can to “make sure that science is accessible to everyone.”
“What national data will tell us is that women are approaching fields like biology, lagging way behind in fields such as math and physics, and we’re paying attention to that,” Peterson said “We’re recruiting a lot of students and women into those fields.
The College of Science recently held a commencement address where one of the speakers, a Nobel Prize winner from MIT, mentioned how impressed he was with the number of women who were graduating in math and the number of African-Americans graduating with Ph.D.’s from LSU.
“I’m very proud to be the first female dean of the college,” Peterson said. “Since I’ve been dean, we’ve had huge successes bringing in faculty from the best institutions from across the globe here at LSU. We’ve certainly taken advantages of the opportunities to broaden the diversity of our faculty across the board.”
Peterson has been encouraging students to take on science in their careers by promoting K-12 science and math education and teacher preparation courses. In partnership with the College of Science, Peterson showed the film “Hidden Figures” to middle and high school students with a panel discussion of women in the STEM workforce.
Recently, the College has had a 46 percent increase in undergraduate applicants from the year before. Peterson said the College of Science is seeing “record size” classes.
Peterson is planning on launching a first year seminar for students in the hopes of making the University feel “smaller.”
“It will help them go through adjusting to college with what to expect in a classroom that’s different than what you’ve been exposed to up till now,” Peterson said. “A lot of students come into college with a science major with a very sharp focus as to what they want to do … and one of the things we like to do early on is to open people’s minds up to show them a wide variety of things they can do with a major in science.”
Peterson said she hopes to reach out to all 1,200 incoming freshman in the College of Science.
“Do science and learn facts,” Peterson said.“That’s what science is. It’s actively asking questions and approaching things in a methodical and very exciting way. There are lots and lots of opportunities in our state and in our nation.”