$3 million given to help female faculty members
Utah State University’s science and engineering department was one of 10 schools granted $3 million by the National Science Foundation in an effort to recruit and retain women faculty on campus.
Professor of mathematics and statistics Jim Powell said the Supportive Workplace Initiative is a five-year study that will investigate changes to policies, procedures and campus climate that have made it difficult to balance a professional and personal life, particularly for women and other minorities in science engineering and agriculture. While this area is the focus of the program, Powell, who is a primary faculty member of the SWI, said in the long run the program will help the entire campus.
“We are losing very talented people,” said Ronda Callister, who is a management and human resources associate professor and one of the principal investigators of the project. “If there were some modest changes, more women faculty would stay in academia and be able to contribute their talents and abilities.”
Callister said the National Science Foundation conducted a study which revealed that despite the fact that in the past 20 years the number of women obtaining a science doctorate had dramatically increased, the percent of tenured women in the field stayed the same, which indicated there were possible problems at the university level that made it difficult to stay. The grant program was established to counteract the problem.
Callister said a tenure means a professor has established research in a six-year time span and has been granted a more permanent job.
Biology associate professor Kim Sullivan said the program will improve the work environment for all faculty, not just women.
“We want to create a workplace model where all faculty, women and men, can be successful in highly competitive research fields and still maintain a rich personal life,” Sullivan said.
Powell said the overall program will be beneficial to recruiting campus diversity.
“Our university cultures here are not very diverse and that’s costing us when competing against other universities nationally,” Powell said. “We’re not going to be able to compete at that unless we do something different than we have historically.”
According to a survey conducted on USU faculty last year, untenured women reported that their biggest obstacles to success and sources of dissatisfaction are isolation and poor mentoring, which Callister said is when a more senior faculty member takes an interest and helps a junior member establish their career.
Callister said the isolation female faculty members experience results from of a lack of information.
“Information in larger organizations doesn’t flow smoothly,” Callister said. “Some information gets lost along the way. Those people who are well-connected and have friends in high places get help with things like grants, and women report being left out of that loop.”
A proposal written by the principle investigators of the project said one of the SWI’s approaches to overcome isolation is to strengthen the Tri-Council for Women, composed of the Women’s Center, Women and Gender Research Institute and the Women and Gender Studies program.
According to the proposal, adding a faculty member to the Women’s Center will assist women faculty by helping with networking and collaborations with other colleagues, providing support and generally working to keep information flowing.
Powell said other plans include a mediating program, which will have one or two trained mediators to handle complaints among faculty, and tenure extensions for family circumstances.
According to the proposal, other plans of action take family oriented approaches including building a child care facility and accommodating spouses.
Powell said this is important because balancing the demands of work and family can be difficult for all parents, regardless of their sex.
“There are many involved parents of both genders, but statistically speaking more often than not it’s the mom that pulls the heavier weight when the kids are young,” Powell said. “One of the reasons that’s cited nationally for women who are leaving tenure track jobs is family issues. Women scientists and engineers are looking at the amount they’re doing with their family and what they’re doing with their work, and anytime there is some kind of a child care problem it ends up impacting their ability to work.”
-mspradling@cc.usu.edu