Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Katharine Stinson was the first woman to graduate from NC State's School of Engineering. Stinson received a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering degree in the Aeronautical option. Stinson was taking flying lessons at the old Raleigh Airport on US-401 when Amelia Earhart flew in for a visit in the early 1930s. When Stinson told Earhart that she wanted to become a pilot, Earhart advised her to become an engineer, which was a career Stinson pursued in spite of obstacles that prevented most young women from striving for such a degree. Stinson was told she must enter State College as a junior, so she completed forty-eight semester hours in one year at Meredith, including two summer sessions, to attain her goal. Besides being the first woman engineer to graduate from NC State, Stinson was the first woman engineer hired by the Civil Aeronautics Administration, now the Federal Aviation Administration, in February 1942. By the time she retired from the FAA, as Technical Assistant Chief of the Engineering and Manufacturing Division, she had served as the third president of the Society of Woman Engineers and on a presidential advisory committee for aviation safety under Lyndon Johnson. "I just wanted to be a good engineer...I just did my job and most of the men accepted me," Stinson once said.