Vol. 38, No. 18

1-5-2005
By: Joni Bentz Seal

Project laying foundation for recruitment, retention of women in science and engineering

In 1994, women comprised 8.9 percent of the faculty in Ohio State’s College of Engineering. A decade later, the figure is only slightly greater, with 10.8 percent of the 259 engineering faculty being of the female persuasion.

This situation is not unique to Ohio State, said Bud Baeslack, dean of the college. Engineering colleges and schools across the country are very concerned about the lack of women on their faculties, and within their undergraduate and graduate student bodies. But it’s a catch-22.

“The growth and advancement of women faculty in the College of Engineering is not only an equality issue within the academic profession, but much more, as the presence of women teachers and mentors greatly impacts the entry and academic success of women students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels,” Baeslack said. “If we are to ultimately realize a growth in the candidate pool for faculty, we must not only attract more women high school students into science and engineering, but, as undergraduate and graduate students, interest them in the professoriate. And this is perhaps best accomplished through the mentoring of women faculty role models.”

The first step to improving the recruitment, retention and advancement of women faculty in a college is to understand the current status of the gender issues in the college. In 2003, then-interim vice president for research Tom Rosol convened a group of deans, including Baeslack’s predecessor Jim Williams, Joan Herbers of biological sciences, and Richard Freeman of mathematical and physical sciences, to pursue an NSF ADVANCE Institutional Transformation grant on behalf of Ohio State. The goal of the ADVANCE program is to promote increased participation, retention and advancement of women scientists and engineers in academia. Among the criteria for the institutional transformation award is the requirement that institutions have examined their current policies and practices and developed plans to pursue new organizational strategies to make access by women in all leadership ranks of university faculties a priority.

Although the application for the grant is due this spring, the preparation actually began in 2002, when Williams created a workgroup to summarize the 2000 SRI Report’s findings in regard to his college’s gender equity issues.

“The workgroup discovered that SRI lumped together women and minorities — the majority of whom were Asian male faculty — so when inquiries about the barriers to advancement were made, any trends related to women, such as the need for child care or lack of mentors, were completely camouflaged,” said Mary Juhas, senior assistant dean for outreach and special programs in engineering and a member of the SRI workgroup and the ADVANCE grant project team. “We decided that engineering needed to do a comprehensive study on its own women.”

The workgroup began with the Knowlton School of Architecture (KSA), which employed 10 women — nearly half the total number of women faculty in the college at the time — and possessed the most complete historical data, Juhas said. Rather than create an independent set of measures, the workgroup used the 12 ADVANCE Institutional Transformation Indicators, which are recognized nationally as a means to measure progress for women in the fields of science and engineering.

“NSF insists on us using the indicators to measure progress if we receive the grant, so we want to use these data in the proposal and then set benchmarks for future assessment,” Herbers said.

One of the main challenges has been obtaining complete and reliable information for the various college units in preparation for future unit studies. The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, with six women faculty, is next.

“Our goal is to gather information for the past 15 years, but until recently, data collection had been performed by the individual colleges and therefore, has lacked consistency — and in some cases, is non-existent,” Herbers said, adding that the information, such as number and percent of women in rank and time in rank is now maintained centrally through the Office of Academic Affairs. Factors such as space allocation and start up packages are tracked at the college level, she said.

Findings
Data collected from KSA revealed that no women in the school had ever been hired above the rank of assistant professor nor had any been promoted to full professor. Juhas said they also discovered qualitative ‘patterns of evidence’ that were greatly impacting the hiring and advancement of women in the college. The workgroup concluded that the college, as an overarching unit, did not have a set of stated values that guided the work of the college or departments in regard to promoting the progress of women — or men, for that matter.

“We’re not referring to rules and regulations, but the cultural values on issues such as salary, the number of women faculty, mentoring systems, family-related matters and dual career support that are necessary to attract and retain faculty of both sexes; values that should influence the creation or revision of policies and processes that enhance the environment for women, not only at the college level, but institutionwide,” Juhas said.

Progress
It is instilling those cultural values where Baeslack, Herbers and Freeman are most heavily involved. Each is committed to improving the climate within his or her respective college based on recommendations in the final report of the SRI workgroup. Improved mentoring support and careful attention to the content of offer and reference letters are among the more tangible results to date, Juhas said. “Much of the progress so far is building an awareness and instilling subtle changes in expectations, such as diversity in candidate lists,” she said.

Baeslack explains: “The advances that are absolutely essential across the College of Engineering will demand a college leadership team that values, encourages and proactively supports faculty diversity both in hiring and in the critical support that must be provided after hiring to promote career success,” he said. “My goal is that a major proportion of our new hires will be women and underrepresented minorities. This will require departments to work much harder and more creatively in researching potential candidates and effectively recruiting them to OSU, not only by luring faculty from other universities, but also by building networks and establishing programs to create a pipeline of candidates from graduate programs at other top universities. Of course this will demand the resources required to attract and support these outstanding individuals, and I am enthusiastic about providing such support.”

This strategy has already paid off for MAPS. Freeman said the Department of Physics has hired two women faculty in the last two years after a 17-year dearth, bringing the total to four. “Instead of waiting for women to apply, we’ve been actively seeking qualified candidates who want to come to Ohio State and who have that drive for excellence to help make the physics department the best it can be,” he said.

The deans also have enlisted the help of nationally known women’s advancement advocates, such as gender-equity researchers and authors Virginia Valian and Debra Rolison, both of whom visited campus this past year to lecture and facilitate workshops for the deans, chairs and faculty in science and engineering.
Regardless of whether Ohio State receives the ADVANCE grant, Herbers said the deans, in partnership with the President’s Council on Women’s Issues, The Women’s Place and the Office of Human Resources, are committed to laying a foundation for long-term progress toward a more equitable environment for women in engineering and science.

“The award program is called ‘institutional transformation’ for a reason,” Herbers said. “This is about changing policies, changing the way we work, the way we structure our environment. We are not experts; we’re just trying to improve the long-term climate not only in higher education, but in our industries.”
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