On a sunny Saturday morning, members of the Tech community gathered to cut the ribbon and make history as the Women’s Pathway to Progress Art Installation was officially opened. As shown in the reflection of the monument, a crowd of women young and old, alumni and friends, and prominent Atlanta figures filled the stairs to watch.
The monument hangs across the stairs next to the John Lewis Student Center. The overhanging, sweeping monument is home to nearly 3,000 mirrored hexagon tiles, each meant to tell the stories of remarkable women who have impacted the Institute.
Architecturally, the spiral bench located next to Ferst is meant to represent the women at Tech, including students, faculty, staff, administrators, and advocates who have made an impact on Tech’s campus. The sweeping banner across the stairs represents women from Tech who have broken barriers in their fields, and the canopy towards the Student Center represents the Institute’s future female leaders.
On the day of the opening, 168 of the tiles were already filled, telling the stories of the remarkable alumni, students, faculty, administration, and friends of Tech. The remaining uninscribed tiles are blank slates ready for someone else’s story to be added at a later time.
Notably, Kelly Braun, CS ‘84 and the first woman to serve as the editor-in-chief of the Technique, was honored with a tile on the monument. Her work challenging the state to provide better funding for education won an award from the Georgia College Press Association. The Technique also won a first place award for excellence under her leadership.
Alongside her tile, there are dedications to other significant women at Tech, including Dorothy Crosland, Ella Van Leer and Shirley Clements Mewborn.
“These are the women who changed this place for good and for the better,” said President Angel Cabrera during his opening remarks.
President Cabrera was joined at the unveiling by first lady, Beth Cabrera, Student Government Association President Shivani Virani, fourth-year NEUR, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, ChemE ‘98, Alumni Association President Dene Sheheane, MGT ‘91, donor Andrea Laliberte, ISyE ‘82, M.S. ISyE 1984, and architect Merica May Jensen, MGT ‘08, M. ARCH 2011.
Earlier in the day, Beth Cabrera moderated a Women’s Panel Discussion between four other notable female alumni. During the panel discussion and ceremony, many women and contributors were visibly emotional as the monument’s unveiling took place during a period of upheaval.
The women’s monument was unveiled during a time of turmoil, as Tech opted to restructure several programs related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and remove information from its websites. Several DEI programs were discontinued — notably, the Women’s Resource Center — in response to federal executive orders.
“I wish people just had more empathy and more were more interested in connecting than dividing. And I hope this project emphasizes that,” Jensen said.
As the architect and designer of the monument, Jensen originally planned to create a similar monument using chairs that spiraled upwards, a design she hastily came up with when given an original deadline of one year to have the monument prepared by Fall 2022 to celebrate 70 years of women at Tech.
As word spread out to faculty and students about the monument, many expressed their discomfort and critiques about its appearance and the showcase of women represented. With help from the Dean of Libraries, Jensen spent another year working with an advisory committee to conduct community outreach to students and faculty, probing their ideas and desires for the project.
Remarking on the process, Jensen is grateful for the students and faculty intervening. As she uncovered more about the history of women at Tech, more tiles were added featuring a wide variety of women such as the first female Buzz, wives of graduates, and women that attended the unofficial night school.
“My favorite proposal for the redesign was to build nothing and take all the money and give it to students to build something every year. Because for me, I learned so much in doing it, and I gained such an appreciation of its complicatedness and alumna and the history…and I feel like the subject (monument) is gonna continually change” Jensen remarks.
For women across the Institute, the monument was a deep acknowledgement to the contributions that women have provided to Tech. Until the construction of the installation, there had been no explicit dedication for women on Tech’s campus.
“Apply, take up space, believe in yourself. You belong here,” said Virani during her remarks at the grand opening.
“Our presence here matters. Seeing what the women here have accomplished has filled me with endless pride”
Women at Tech account for 40% of the undergraduate body and 28% of the graduate body, according to the Institutes Fall 2024 Census. During his remarks at the opening, Sheheane expressed that of about the 200,000 alumni that Tech has, roughly only a quarter of them are women.
Inspired by the works of Maya Lin and Jenny Holzer – artists of women’s monuments at Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania respectively – Jensen expressed her main objective for the monument: a need for togetherness in times of uncertainty.
“We must tell the sad stories. We must tell the good stories,” she said. “We mustn’t [only] celebrate excellence. We must celebrate failure.”