With 25 years of advocacy behind it The University of Technology Sydney's Women in Engineering (WiE) program has been lauded as one of the main reasons many Australian female engineers chose the profession.

The only remaining program of its kind at an Australian university, UTS Women in Engineering was celebrated by more than 200 people last week at a gala dinner attended by alumni, past WiE coordinators, Faculty of Engineering staff and students and representatives of industry sponsors and employers including Arup, Accenture, Alstom, IBM, Cisco Systems, Alcatel and Maunsell.

A former WiE coordinator and now Executive Dean of the Faculty of Sciences, Engineering, and Health at Central Queensland University, Elizabeth Taylor AO, said UTS stood alone for the level of support it had given to encouraging women to see engineering as a worthwhile study and career option.

One of the recipients of that support was civil engineer Hannah Price, who returned to UTS last month to speak at the annual WiE Hands On Day for high school students. It was also an occasion for her to meet a current engineering student she had inspired without even knowing it.

The mothers of Ms Price and environmental engineering student Melissa Tranter are work colleagues, and a discussion they had about Hannah's course led to Melissa deciding to switch from studying nursing to engineering.

"I really knew nothing about engineering at school," said Melissa, who is now in the fourth year of her UTS degree. "I'd never realised how much it could be about people as well as technology.

"I did a year of nursing before taking a year off to work on a sailing ship going around Australia. Seeing pristine places like the Kimberley coast inspired me to do something with an environmental focus."

Hearing about Hannah's course from her mother was one of the clues that engineering could be the right direction to pursue that goal.

"Environmental engineers are the negotiators," she said. "They help find the balance that ensures development doesn't come at a high cost."

Women in Engineering Program Director Bronwyn Holland said there was still much work to be done in a profession where only eight percent of the workforce is female.

"In recent years there has been a slowdown in the rate of enrolment by girls in engineering courses – a trend that has been even more marked in the information and communications technology field," Ms Holland said.

"It seems the practical merits of engineering as a rewarding and creative career with secure employment prospects are not enough to overcome its traditional profile with women. We are looking to this anniversary as an opportunity to bring renewed energy to working on this challenge with schools, industry and progressive employers of women."