Denice Dee Denton Women Engineers Hall of Fame

In 2008 Maseeh College established the Denice Dee Denton Women Engineers Hall of Fame to honor those who have made a significant impact through their dedication to the engineering profession. Every year one outstanding engineer and one outstanding engineering student are inducted. Candidates exhibit academic and/or professional excellence, be engaged with their community and prove exceptional leadership skills.

About Denice Dee Denton

Denice Dee Denton (August 27, 1959 – June 24, 2006) was an inspirational leader and a strong voice for social justice, diversity, and excellence. She was the first woman in the nation to lead an engineering college at a major university and made a national name for herself for her advocacy of women in science and engineering and was a champion of diversity.

She earned her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked as a faculty member at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich and University of Wisconsin-Madison before becoming the Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Washington. In 2004, she became Chancellor of the University of California at Santa Cruz. She was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council (NAS/NAR) Board on Engineering Education. Her lifetime of accomplishments and accolades serve as inspiration for fellow women engineers and technologists.

Outstanding Female Engineer, Megan Smith

Megan Smith, an award-winning entrepreneur, engineer, and tech evangelist took the Outstanding Female Engineer honors.

Megan received her Bachelor’s and Master’s in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). After graduating she worked at a variety of start-ups, including Apple in Tokyo and General Magic, before becoming the CEO of PlanetOut, a leading LGBT online community. Megan joined Google in 2003 and served as the VP of New Business Development, where she managed early-stage partnerships, pilot explorations, and technology licensing across Google’s global engineering and product teams. She then transitioned to Vice President of Google[x], Google’s advanced products team, and led a wide range of diversity and inclusion initiatives including co-creating Women Techmakers.

In September 2014, President Obama named Megan Smith the United States Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in the Office of Science and Technology Policy. In this role, she served as an Assistant to the President and focused on how technology policy and innovation can advance the future of our nation.
After leaving the White House in 2017, she helped launch the Tech Jobs Tour, which aims to promote diversity in the technological sector. As of March 2018, she is the CEO and Founder of shift7, a company specializing in tech-forward innovation and inclusive collaboration for faster, scaled impact on economic uplift, equity and inclusion.

She has served on the boards of MIT, MIT Media Lab, MIT Technology Review, and Vital Voices; as a member of the USAID Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid; and as an advisor to the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and the Malala Fund, which she co-founded.

Outstanding Female Engineering Student, Prerna Agarwal

Prerna Agarwal is the Vice President of We in Computer Science (WiCS) where she helps organize the annual WiCS hackathon. She is a Technical Course Support Specialist (undergrad TA) in the Computer Science department where she assists students with their coursework and works as a back-end developer in the Systems & Networking lab at PSU. Prerna is interested in pursuing her Master’s degree in Systems and Networking. In 2019, she received the Outstanding International Student Award in recognition of her leadership.

Outstanding Female Engineering Student, Allie Hanson

Alexandra "Allie" Hanson is a participant of the S-STEM Scholars program and student of the Honors College. She works at the Office of Information Technology and is and pursuing research opportunities at the Asynchronous Research Center (ARC). Allie is the Treasurer/Historian in WiCS. Through WiCS, she coordinates the WiCS Mentorship Program and annual Hackathon, with the goal of helping students from underrepresented communities succeed in computer science careers. Her experience at PSU has inspired her to pursue doctoral studies next academic year and her ultimate goal is to become a research professor. She looks forward to a future career in which she can give back and support students, particularly those that have been traditionally underrepresented in STEM.