Honoring First Alumna

In January 1967, Penny Lee Carlisle (now Fox) became the first woman to earn an engineering bachelor’s degree from the College of Engineering at Arlington State College. That semester, ASC became UTA, and months later, at the College's spring Commencement ceremony, Margaret Kantz became the first woman to earn an engineering bachelor's degree from UTA.

Over her career Carlisle worked for LTV on the A7 aircraft, McDonnell Douglas on a proposal to build the space shuttle, and Lockheed Martin on several missile systems. “When I first went to work at LTV in 1967, I was told that I did not need to work in the wind tunnels as they were dirty places,” Fox says. “When I returned 15 years later, I was running different programs in the High-Speed Wind Tunnel. The change that has occurred for women engineers since the 1960s is amazing.”