Female engineers remain scarce on America’s college campuses and work sites, but at a massive commuter rail project heading north out of Denver, women are running the show.

Jane Donovan, Nicole Harwell, Katrina Rodriguez and Jennifer Whiteside are lead engineers on the 18.5-mile North Line that in 2018 will link Denver Union Station with Thornton and eventually run to Highway 7.

Donovan is the deputy project manager, Harwell the drainage engineer, Whiteside a structures engineer and Rodriguez is the station architect.

“Here you have four women who are taking on leadership roles on a pretty high-profile project,” Harwell said. “I think that is pretty important.”

“To have women as the lead on diverse disciplines on this project means we are breaking barriers and changing tradition,” added Donovan, who began working at the Regional Transportation District in 2009.

She has the longest tenure with RTD among the women, but all started with the agency by 2010. Rodriquez began work on the Denver Union Station project and then transferred to the North Line when work began on that project.

The women bring a varied set of skills. They are also still, sadly, an oddity in the American engineering workforce, says Megan Schulze, president of the Rocky Mountain Section of the Society of Women Engineers.

“Women continue to be significantly under represented in almost every engineering field,” said Schulze.

Only 10.1 percent of employed civil engineers in the United States are women, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Compare this with mechanical engineers, where 6.5 percent of the workforce are women, and software engineers, where 24.6 percent of the of workforce are women, Schulze said.

“Considering that more women graduate annually with bachelor’s degrees than men,” she said, “the engineering field statistics are not reflective of overall workforce demographics.”

More women are enrolling in engineering programs, Schulze said, but not at the rates necessary to increase the ratio of women-to-men in engineering programs.

The late 1990s saw a drop in the percent of women enrolled in engineering classes, Schulze said. Much of that was because of the persistent stereotypes that girls don’t belong in engineering, she said.

None of the four N-Line women say they were discouraged from going into engineering. Donovan, 53, is the oldest of the group while the rest got their schooling in the 1990s and the 2000s.

Both at home and in the classroom, they encountered few obstacles because of their gender.

“I think the traditional thinking about what girls should do with their lives began changing with our moms,” Hartwell said. “They told us that we didn’t necessarily have to be nurses or flight attendants. We could do what we wanted to do.”

“I always enjoyed art and math,” added Rodriguez. “I thought I could mix those two passions together and it led to engineering.”

She said if she did encounter any chauvinism from professors or classmate, “I just let it roll off my back.”

“Really, everyone was there in class to learn and took us beyond all that other stuff, ” Rodriguez said.

RTD says programs such as its Workforce Initiative Now (WIN) is helping to add more women and minorities to its 2,700-member work force. Beginning in 2011, WIN partnered with the Community College of Denver, Denver Transit Partners and other private companies and government agencies to train people to work on construction, transportation and other key public infrastructure projects.

Since WIN’s inception, more than 400 people have landed jobs either with RTD or have kick- started advanced training opportunities, according to the agency. WIN has also been copied by other transit agencies, including the Massachusetts Bay Transportation.

A diverse workforce strengthens the agency and its projects, said RTD general manager and CEO Dave Genova.

“We strive to have a diverse workforce at RTD,” Genova said. “I am also committed to fostering talent within our agency through our professional development programs which include mentoring opportunities for our team members.”

The N-Line is part of RTD’s $6.5 billion FasTracks program, which will develop 122 miles of new commuter and light rail as well as 18 miles of bus rapid transit in the metro area.

Donovan said she decided to tackle engineering even though an early instructor said she ought to consider drafting as a career. She opted instead for engineering and worked her way to a master’s degree in structural engineering at the University of Wyoming. There were only two other women in the same program.

“But I never really thought about much,” Donovan said. “I was just there to do the work and I enjoyed it.”

Whiteside was the only woman in her master’s program at Florida State University, in 2002. As a structures engineer, she is responsible for the integrity of 13 bridges along the N-Line, including walls along the alignment.

She has two daughters and encourages them to become involved with Colorado’s STEM —Science, Technology, Engineering and Math — curriculum. STEM tries to steer middle school-aged children toward careers in math and science.

“But my 12-year-old is not interested, at least not yet,” Whiteside said. “Hopefully, one day she will.”

Pointing more kids toward careers in science and math will help boost the ranks of female engineers, Schulze said.

Breaking down “institutional barriers” and providing career support as well as better strategies for recruiting and retaining women will help bring more into the engineering fold, Schulze said.

“Students often choose careers based on in-school guidance and familiarity whether through exposure in the classroom or at home,” Schulze said. “Having STEM activities in both those settings is important.”