OHIO, USA — The Ohio State Highway Patrol is setting a goal to recruit more women to the department.
OSHP wants 30% of its troopers to be women by 2030. Nine women are currently going through the training academy.
They will soon join the 104 female troopers across the state, making up about 7.8% of all 1,335 troopers that serve Ohio.
Lt. Brittany Noah in the Office of Recruitment and Diversity is tasked with seeing that percentage grow.
“I think the more women you have in a workforce, I think it kind of gives a different perspective to the women we are serving, and then it helps us give a different perspective in our division too,” she said.
The department is hosting a women’s readiness seminar on April 6 where women can learn more about what it takes to do the job.
“I think anybody who is self-motivated, self-driven, anybody who is up for any type of challenge if you want to push yourself beyond the types of anything you have ever done, I think you would be a perfect fit for our division,” said Noah.
She said the biggest challenge in recruiting women to OSHP is getting them interested in law enforcement and showing them that there are different ways to serve the department.
The 104 existing female troopers all bring something different to the state highway patrol.
Sgt. Bridget Matt serves in OSHP’s public affairs unit and is oftentimes the face of the department, doing interviews.
“One thing I have learned is I can be a state trooper, but I can also be a mother, a wife, I can go back to school, I am getting my master’s degree right now- you can do many things at once and still be a good trooper,” she said.
She joined the academy in her early thirties.
“I felt the same way a lot of females feel entering into a workforce that is primarily male-dominated, that I wasn’t sure if I would be good enough or wasn’t sure that I would make it and just having that confidence in yourself and the academy going through that experience, they definitely build up your confidence and get you where you need to be to be a good state trooper,” Matt said.
Trooper Holly Chesnick trains new troopers at the Academy and mentors women learning to be troopers.
“I am here to prove to you that myself and every amazing woman who has come before me, we have all fought through those same things. We maybe thought we weren’t good enough and we fought through that, we have all been in a position where we thought maybe I am not strong enough. Yes, you are. That is a mentality you have to have you have to have a no quit mentality,” Chesnick said.
As new troopers, they sit in classrooms dedicated to some of the female trailblazers in OSHP like Diane Harris. She was the first woman to join the department in 1977 and the reason OSHP changed the role’s original name of patrolmen to troopers.
Another classroom is dedicated to Lt. Col. Marla Gaskill, the first OSHP female pilot and Major Lisa Taylor, the first female promoted as a lieutenant.
Their stories are reminders of how far the department has come in the last few decades and how far they still want to go when it comes to incorporating women into OSHP.
“I think they forged a path for other females in the highway patrol to reach these heights that females before them didn’t think was possible,” Sgt. Matt said.
To reserve a spot for the women’s readiness seminar on April 6, send an email to ADRecruit@dps.ohio.gov. To learn more about the qualifications to be a state trooper, click here.