CWU has been recognized by College Factual, one of the largest college information and ranking companies in the US, for its population’s gender diversity, according to CWU Public Affairs Coordinator Dawn Alford in a press release. CWU now places in the top 10 percent of colleges in the nation in terms of gender equality, defined as the distance a college’s enrolled population is from 50/50 male-to-female representation. Out of the 2,486 colleges surveyed, CWU ranked 138rd in College Factual’s ranking system.

Kandee Cleary, vice president of inclusivity and diversity at CWU responded to College Factual’s recognition of CWU.

“We contribute our success to a wide variety of ethnic, race, and gender experiences we provide our students as well as a rich academic experience to prepare them to work in a global society,” Cleary said.

The national trend, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), shows a growing gender gap between male and female enrollment numbers in favor of females. The national average shows women constituting 56 percent of students, which is an almost flipped ratio since the 70s when males made up 58 percent of students and females 42 percent.

CWU isn’t seeing such an extreme gender gap, with 51 females to 49 males, or about 2 percent more women than men on the Ellensburg campus according to College Factual.

“We’re coming up. It’s always been more guys than girls,” 18-year-old law and justice major Veronica Martinez said.

Undeclared 18-year-old student Tylesia Brady hit upon a trend noticed by many students at CWU. She said that she has noticed an increase in women involved in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs and career paths. According to National Science Foundation statistics, since 1993 there has been between a 5 and 15 percent increase in women in all STEM fields except for computer sciences and mathematical studies.

According to 19-year-old computer science major Toni Pridemore, while CWU overall may see nearly equal gender representation, that isn’t always true when you look at the classrooms of different departments.

Mike Villarreal, a 21-year-old ROTC student says that even though he is glad to see diversity on campus, ROTC remains somewhat of a boy’s club.

“I would say that we have about nine males to each female,” he said. “I feel like [among the cadets] women are held to higher expectations than men are.”