. "6 Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering." Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2007.
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Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering
Mentoring and advising
Require pedagogical training with a gender bias component for doctoral students.
Improve freshman advising.
Track the progress of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, and provide mentoring and professional development.
Limit the length of appointment and set a base salary for postdoctoral fellows.
Provide mentors for junior faculty in the science departments.
Enabling academic science careers in the context of familyobligations
Explore options to provide paid maternity leave and increase child-care scholarships for doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows.
Expand the dependent care fund for short-term professional travel.
Establish research-enabling grants for primary caregivers in the sciences.
Faculty development and diversity
Design programs on diversity.
Revise and expand search processes to increase the recruitment of women and underrepresented minority faculty in the sciences.
Establish programs to provide funding and relief for key transition points in academic careers.
grams have emerged to fill the void. Box 6-3 details an existing program that has proven effective at increasing the retention of women and men junior faculty.
Tenured faculty with management responsibilities—including department chairs, deans, and search committee chairs—would benefit from periodic workshops in which they examine ground rules and work to correct gender bias. Efforts should focus on providing mandatory workshops for deans, department heads, search committee chairs, grant reviewers, and other faculty with personnel evaluation and management responsibilities. The workshops should include an integrated component on diversity and the strategies needed to overcome bias and gender schemas. For example, the WISELI program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison convenes department heads for workshops on department climate (Box 6-4). Such forums provide an opportunity for general discussion of how to manage
