Female Engineers Persistent

A recent article in the Chronicle comments on a study suggesting that female engineering students are retained at equal rates with male students, which is good news overall. However, I think the conclusion that there is no need to focus on retention is misplaced. Rather this suggests that efforts to retain female students are working (e.g. making things a little more friendly for women) and should be continued, while efforts to attract women should be increased.

My experience as academic adviser to >90 undergraduate engineering students is that preparation is probably the biggest factor in retention. Students who come in with a poor math or science (chemistry/physics) are the most likely to switch out of engineering. Another issue we have also observed is that students who are encouraged to start in courses that are too advanced their freshmen year are more likely to transfer our of engineering. For example starting in Calc II rather than Calc III, and having some repeated material but higher grade builds confidence and correlates with success. This tends to impact students from small (often rural schools) and inner city schools in a disproportionate way. So the new party line is to give up some of those AP credits, have an easier freshmen year and build confidence. I have mixed feeling about this since clearly this advice does not apply for super bright students and it's hard for me to tell in 15 minutes who these super bright kids.

What are your thoughts on the retention data? I do have to say I like the term persistence. I think you need to have a little staying power to survive as a female engineer.

Summer camp for scientists

I recently attended a Gordon conference (better known as summer camp for scientists). It was overall a great time. Rustic setting, good talks, a chance to see old friends and make new ones, a bit of time to reflect on my field in general..... I am encouraged by the increasing number of women in my field, both as faculty, but also as post-docs and students. It has definitely increased since my days as a graduate student. However, there are still some signs of the subtle undercurrent of a "man's world". I've grown used to it from hanging out with guys in college and graduate school, so sometimes I almost don't notice it. But then someone slips and says something in public without thinking, and you wonder, "is that what they are really thinking all the time?" It was also interesting to observe people's responses to the comments. I realized that when you know someone, you are more likely to dismiss their comments if they are generally supportive of women/minorities and nice to you. But, for students/post-docs who had never met these people they came off as real jerks and other actions they had taken (e.g. asking a harsh question of a female speaker) were viewed in a negative light after the comment. So, how do you deal with that? And if you were the chair of the conference, would you ask the person to apologize for making a clearly insensitive comment? Or would you stand up and simply state that this kind of comment is clearly not appropriate for the conference? Would it change your mind if the conference were on probation for having problems of this nature in the past?

I sometimes wonder if I have become a bit of an apologist or an enabler for those who say inappropriate things, but don't mean to. Is it OK if they are of a certain generation? I generally try to have a thick skin and let things roll off my back, but am I making things worse for the women who come after me by not calling out a comment out when I hear it? And what about when you hear someone of your own generation make the same type of comment?

We've decided to form a girls network. A list of women in the field to invite for talks and nominate for awards, plenary lectures, etc. I used to think one of my mentors was a little over the top about her promotion of women (sometimes at the clear expense of equally deserving men), but maybe she is right and women still do need an extra push. Any thoughts?

Mentoring

I went to a meeting today to discuss the mentoring procedures in different schools at my university (RU). We shared the programs in departments from romance languages to law. What struck me was the vast differences. In some departments all the senior faculty read the junior faculties publications and recommend journals/publishers for them. That's pretty different from my experience. I don't have any senior faculty in my field in the department and thus would not have anyone to make recommendations of this nature.

We also discussed the NRC report that recently came out. One of the most striking findings I saw was the difference in funding rates of women with mentors.

"Over all six fields surveyed female assistant professors with no mentors had a 68 percent probability of having grant funding versus 93 percent of women with mentors. This contrasts with the pattern for male assistant professors; those with no mentor had an 86 percent probability of having grant funding versus 83 percent for those with mentors."

So women with mentors have a much better funding rate. And, my read on this is that men get informal mentoring and thus don't need formal mentors to get the same guidance (a generalization of course). I have to say that my informal female mentors were instrumental in helping me learn to navigate the grant submission/review process. For more discussion see FemaleScienceProfessor.

I hope that as I move forward I can continue to find good informal mentoring from more senior faculty and also help to guide those who are at an earlier career stage.

Just as I was feeling like I might be getting on track for the summer progress, the phone rang with the dreaded caller id showing "daycare". AHH! Turns out that my son might actually have a little stomach bug. And I thought he was just trying to stall getting ready this morning with his "my tummy hurts" complaints. He has discovered the power illness in drawing attention away from his younger sibling and thus all illnesses are treated with skepticism lately. Of course after he was picked up early, he proceeded to run around the house playing like a crazy man. So he was not feeling too bad. Still, I've already begun the mental rearranging of all remaining tasks for this week and prioritizing of all meetings (ranking those that can be canceled or time that husband could flex to cover). Nothing so important we need to call the emergency sitting service...

Welcome

Hello and welcome. I'm starting this blog to share my journey as a faculty member in engineering and mom of 2 young children. I am currently an associate professor of engineering at a private research university. My goal with this blog is to seek and share encouragement for other women in the sciences and engineering. Names will be withheld to protect the innocent.

I will refer to my research as studying wombats (not the actual subject). Currently I'm working on summer research and mentoring my summer undergraduates, as well as several graduate students in engineering. I just completed a submission of my renewal for my NIH R01.

Now I'm collecting the odds and ends that remain on the summer to-do list (editing papers, reviewing manuscripts, grant rewrite for fall submission deadline) and trying to plan how to best accomplish them in the remain month and change of my summer.