Babies, Mothers, and Academic Careers
Friday, December 5, at 1 p.m., U.S. Eastern timeWhy is managing children and an academic career so much more difficult for women than men? What, if anything, should colleges and universities do to make it easier?
A new national study has found that female professors with children are much less likely to earn tenure than men with children. Women are expected to work the hardest during their tenure-track years, precisely the time when their biological clocks are ticking the loudest. There are no part-time options on the tenure track, and if a woman steps off of that track to care for children, there is little hope of returning. Why is managing children and an academic career so much more difficult for women than men? What, if anything, should colleges and universities do to make it easier?
» How Babies Alter Careers for Academics (12/5/2003)
Mary Ann Mason is dean of the graduate division at the University of California at Berkeley. She directed the national study of how babies affect the careers of academic men and women, a project she calls "Do Babies Matter?" Ms. Mason has a Ph.D. in history as well as a law degree. Before becoming dean, in 2000, she was a professor of law and social welfare at Berkeley. She has written several dozen articles on family law and children's rights, and two books on child custody. She will respond to questions and comments about the study on Friday, December 5, at 1 p.m., U.S. Eastern time. Questions and comments are welcome and may be posted now.
Robin Wilson (Moderator):
Hello. I'm Robin Wilson, and I write about work/life issues for The Chronicle. We've had an overwhelming number of questions submitted in advance, and we'll try to get to as many as possible. Welcome to Mary Ann Mason and to all of you participating in the chat this afternoon.
Mary Ann Mason:
I am very glad to be joining you here today for what I expect to be an engaging and interesting discussion of these important issues.
Robin Wilson (Moderator):
Ok, Dr. Mason. Let's go to our first question.
Question from Celia R Hooper, Univ. of NC at Greensboro:
Did YOU do well managing children and academic career? How did you get interested in studying this topic? Finally, do you find that universities headed by women do a better job of "making it easier?" Thanks
Mary Ann Mason:
I have two grown children and it was certainly not easy managing children and career. That was why I began to study this issue, as early as the late 1980's, when I wrote a book, "The Equality Trap", about problem of opening the doors to women without changing the structure of the workplace. At that time I was practicing law with two small children. It did not work well. As for strategies--I kept on writing while raising children and was offered a tenure track position here, at Berkeley--as an Assistant Professor, when the children were mainly grown. I was an example of a re-entry woman--a model that needs to be recognized and incorporated. I did have publications, including "The Equality Trap," which made me a better candidate.
Question from Alice Bullard, Georgia Tech (on leave):
Could you discuss what proportion of Ph.D.s drop out of academia because of marriage or children? Do women drop out at higher rates than men?
Mary Ann Mason:
This is an important pipeline issue. Married women with babies are much more likely to drop out of the academic pipeline before securing a tenure track position. On a year to year basis after receipt of the PhD, married men with babies and single women without babies are on average 50% more likely than are married women with babies to secure a tenure track position. Where do married women with babies go? Married women with babies are much more likely to enter part time positions inside and outside academia, to enter non-tenure track adjunct lecturer positions, or to entirely drop out of the labor force. They are less likely to enter full time positions in the business, non-profit, or government sector. For more information about women with babies going into the second tier of academia, please see our article in Academe, November-December 2002.
Comment from Jane Buck, National President, American Association of University Professors (AAUP):
Mary Ann Mason, today's guest speaker, and Marc Goulden wrote an article last year for AAUP's bi-monthly magazine, "Academe," which I commend to you. The article, entitled "Do Babies Matter? The Effect of Family Formation on the Lifelong Careers of Academic Men and Women," is available on our web site.
Participants in this colloquy might wish to read the AAUP's Statement of Principles on Family Responsibilities and Academic Work, which was adopted in 2001. The URL for the statement is http://www.aaup.org/statements/REPORTS/re01fam.htm.
Question from Anne Foster, Indiana State University:
In the chart for "professors with early babies" the data comes from women getting PhD's from 1978 to 1984. Has the situation changed in the intervening years? I received my PhD in 1995, and at the small Catholic college where I used to teach, virtually every woman in my hiring cohort had children and I believe only one stopped pursuing tenure. The rest of us (I believe) received tenure. Thanks for this interesting article from someone who has a PhD, two small children, earned tenure once, changed jobs while very pregnant, and am now working for tenure again.
Mary Ann Mason:
We were recently asked a similar question about whether the most recent generation of PhDs are different from this earlier cohort in regard to these issues.
We have looked at this issue in terms of entering tenure track positions (because the issue of securing tenure takes a number of years to achieve)—and securing a tenure track position is a necessary pre-condition to eventually achieving tenure.
Our recent analysis of the most recent 5 year cohorts of PhD recipients possible, based on the availability of data, indicates that the same patterns are in place.
Specifically, For a five year cohort of PhD recipients from 1994-1998 in the Sciences and Social Sciences, the likelihood of married women with children under 6 landing a tenure track position in year 1 (the high water mark of tenure track placements) is 8.1% in comparison to 13.6% for married men with children under 6--thus married men with children under 6 in the sciences and social sciences are 68% more likely to land a tenure track position in the first year out from PhD than are married women with children under 6.
As to your specific case and those of your peers, our data looks at the broader national trends and your graduating cohort may not follow this trend.
Question from Ruth Tincoff, Harvard University:
If you step off the tenure-track, what are some of the top strategies to stay competitive and get back on later? *Can* you get back on later?
Mary Ann Mason:
Probably the most important thing to do is too keep publishing and maintain your career contacts. Unfortunately, hiring committees frequently favor candidates with freshly minted PhDs and no clear resume gaps. One of our main Family Friendly initiatives here in California is to promote reentry postdoctoral fellowships and to train faculty to discount resume gaps.
Question from Ruth Tincoff, Harvard University:
How can academic parents present their case for special consideration without alienating their colleagues? What alliances can be formed so that the issue is about the shared responsibility of raising children and building a healthy community and not one of (perceived) personal indulgences?
Mary Ann Mason:
These are difficult issues which address institutional change. We believe the best way to build broad coalitions is to offer policies that appeal to largest possible segment of the population. A flexible part time option for ladder-rank faculty is a good example of this. Faculty members could use this depending on their life-course needs. If they have a baby, they could temporarily go part time. Or if they need to care for a spouse or a parent, they could use it. Or if they have a personal illness or they would like to phase into retirement they could use this option. By configuring the policy in a broad way, most members of the community stand to gain by its implementation and everybody benefits. Another strong argument is that we are losing many of the best and brightest of our Ph.Ds because of family concerns.
Question from Linda J. Goff, Calif. State Univ., Sacramento:
Our campus child care center is run by the Associated Students Inc., with very limited spaces for faculty offspring. How can a public university offer convenient child care to retain younger faculty? We've hired over 300 new faculty within the past 3 years, so this has become a real issue under discussion by our Faculty Policies Committee.
Mary Ann Mason:
This is a very important issue and our survey of University of California ladder-rank faculty has indicated that this is the single most important issue to faculty parents. The survey has also demonstrated that there is wide support for university sponsored or vendored infant and childcare facilities. Even within the UC system, the access of these centers to faculty vs. students or staff varies widely.
Our current thinking is that infant and childcare should be viewed as part of the necessary infrastructure of academic institutions, it is part of the cost of doing business. It is a fundamental aspect of recruitment and retention of faculty. At the University of California, when new buildings are designed they must make some allowance for the creation of necessary parking spaces. We are in the early stages of asking whether the design standards here should also take into account issues of child care in and infant care.
Another possible option is to vendor out infant care and childcare—but even if there is university oversight, the quality of these vendors and the facilities might be problematic.
Question from h:
Are we to blame? I am not suggesting that we blame the victim, but I wonder if we (untenured female academics) promote this inequity by allowing ourselves to be treated this way. How many women have insisted on time off from the tenure process to have a child? How many are willing to expect administrators to understand the "gaps" in their CV?
Mary Ann Mason:
These are always difficult issues to disentangle. Our survey at the University of California has clearly demonstrated that faculty will not avail themselves of useful policies (such as tenure clock extension after the birth of a child) if they fear that it will hurt their chances for achieving tenure or future career promotion. Recognizing this fear, our former UC President made our “stop the clock”—one year for each baby—a default position—and mandated central funding for Active Service Modified Duty (once semester). Changing the culture toward encouragement rather than fear. Our role as researchers and advocates, as we see it, is to let others know that these patterns are in place and to offer potential solutions to current problems in academia.
Question from Gretal Leibnitz, Ph.D. LMP., Washington State University:
As a woman who waited to marry and have a family until I completed my Ph.D., and now a married mother of 2 (4 years & 11 mo.), I recognize that I CHOSE to have children. Inherent in the early aspect of starting and rearing family are implications that I knew would only effect me and not my husband-- (ie. female specific implications of pregnancy, birth, lactation). Is it appropriate to ask for the institutions of higher education to offer special accomodation for a choice I made? Is this fair to those women who choose not to have children (or men who do not bear children)? Is there room for "seperate but equal" tracts of promotion for women in academia who choose to bear children from those that do not?
Mary Ann Mason:
I would look at it this way. Currently, women comprise around 44% of the doctoral degree recipients and 45% of professional degree recipients in the United States. In 1966, they comprised 12% of the doctoral degree recipients and 5% of the professional degree recipients -- a sea change in just over 30 years. Women are now the majority of Master’s and Baccalaureate degree recipients in the U.S. and in the future it is reasonable to expect that they will comprise the majority of Doctoral and Professional degree recipients. Hence, the future “best and brightest” of the professoriate will be increasingly drawn from the ranks of women. It is, therefore, paramount for institutions of higher education that would like to maintain their excellence to develop policies that will attract women who would like to enjoy both a successful career and family life. Institutions that ignore this fundamental demographic shift and fail to develop appropriate policies will do so to the detriment of their own competitive advantage in attracting future faculty.
Overall, the American workplace has done little to accommodate the fact that the great majority of mothers are now in the workplace. An overall re-structuring of the workplace to accommodate families is necessary to make the best use of all workers.
Question from Anonymous, Asst. Prof., Brooklyn College-CUNY:
My husband and I just started tenure-track assistant professorships at Brooklyn College-CUNY. We're planning to have a baby next year and I will probably be the only one to take a parental leave. Since having a baby puts my tenure clock on hold and not my husband's, is it too much to ask him to take on equal responsibility for our baby (getting up at night, changing diapers, etc.) during my parental leave when I do not have the same pressure to publish? Or should I be the primary caregiver during my parental leave, then after I get back on the tenure clock, we split the responsibility 50/50? (On a related note, do you know what's happening with fathers taking parental leaves in academia? Is this happening a lot? Does this hurt their careers?) Thank you!
Mary Ann Mason:
Dual career academic couples working at the same institution face these difficult decisions in regard to policy and caregiving. Data from our University of California survey confirm that the decisions that you are considering are quite typical of those made by other academics in a similar situation. Thirty percent of the eligible assistant professor women who had a newborn or adoptee under 5 enter the household while working at UC chose to have a year added to their tenure clock. In contrast, only 8% of eligible assistant professor men chose to use the policy. Similarly, around half of eligible women take a leave and around half take Active Service-Modified duties (typically teaching relief for a semester or quarter); whereas under 10% of eligible men used each of these policies. Our data also confirm that women ladder-rank faculty still do more of the caregiving than do men ladder-rank faculty. On average, women faculty with children in our UC study self-reported 27 hours of caregiving work a week. In contrast, men faculty with children self-reported around 15 hours of caregiving a week. So women still bear the brunt of caregiving responsibilities, though the numbers for men seem to have increased over time.
Ultimately, your decision is between you and your husband. Sharing workloads depends on many factors, both professional and personal.
Question from Xenia Morin:
Let me first preface my questions with my own situtation. I am a 39-year old female postdoctoral fellow who has been given a chance to reenter academia by Bryn Mawr College. I got my PhD in biochemistry at age 28, started a family at age 31 during a postdoc, and ended up staying at home with two small children for 5-1/2 years until I found this new postdoctoral fellowship that would prepare me for a tenure position to re-enter the workforce. I had read "The Second Shift" and knew that starting a family and starting a lab were incompatible for me--both would effectively take up all of my time, and there was only ONE of me. I wanted to have children and expect to care for them while they were young. Fortunately, I had the luxury of staying home with our children because my husband could support us. When I returned to work, I found that almost half of my salary went to child care and that when all my expences were accounted for, about $5,000 per year was all I netted. My husband has joked that he is subsidizing my academic pursuits because, on a financial level, the only real gain I have received is a pension plan and not much more. Of couse I have gained valuable experience and contributed a significant amount to my current workplace. I am not here for the money as much as to pursue the job I love. But the time needed to do the work is phenomenal and it impacts me, and my family in many, many ways. Lectures and marking get done at home at the expense of spending time with kids or my husband or friends, or at the expsense of my housework, laundry, and cooking. The alternative is that I lose sleep trying to juggle all the jobs I have. Without better financial resources from my own job to take over simple things on the home front, and/or more infrastructure to support my work (espcially in research) on the job, I think it will be hard to sustain this juggling act. So my question is: What data exist on the number of hours per week needed to successfully obtain tenure? Is there a correlation between hours worked and tenure decisions? If this is the case, then we need to address this head on. A competitve system will be skewed to those who can commit 95+% of time and energy. Job ads often state they want "energetic" candidates---does that also mean able to withstand sleep deprivation?
Mary Ann Mason:
We do not know the number of hours per week needed to successfully obtain tenure but we do know that academics work a great deal. In our UC study of ladder-rank faculty, women with children worked on average 53 hour per week on career activities; men with children, 56 hours, women without children 59 hours per week, and men without children 58 hours a week. If you total the hours worked per week in terms of career, caregiving, and household responsibilities, women with children worked a staggering 94 hours per week. In contrast, men with children worked 82 hours a week in total, women without children worked 80 hours per week, and men without children 77 hours per week. So everybody is very busy, but women with children are the most busy—and the hours they can devote to their career takes a hit.
I should note that Jerry Jacobs of the University of Pennsylvania is doing some exciting work in this area, so you should definitely look up his work.
Question from Despagnet Emmanuelle, Caltech:
I am a post doc in chemistry, and I am trying to have an academic position. I would like to have a child but in the field of chemistry when you are pregnant you have to stop contact with chemical products and so stay in front of your computer to do publication works. But when you want an academic position you need results, so when can I be pregnant?
Mary Ann Mason:
This is a question I have been asked by my own students here at Berkeley. As I don’t know all the risks of toxic hazards, I would suggest you contact the Women’s Section of the American Chemical Association, or another related women’s professional group. I suspect they have addressed this issue in more detail.
Comment from Young faculty member Duke University Med Center:
I have a couple of comments on what universities could do to help women faculty cope better:
1. I think it would be very helpful to have universities provide on-call childcare, that may be needed when a child is sick or school is off.
2. I think one way to attract and retain women faculty would be to provide a supplement to their salary that will make taking care of domestic needs easier. My biggest problem is that I don't have time to deal with cooking, cleaning grocery shopping etc etc. and this makes juggling so unappealing; so it would be great if I could afford to hire someone who could do all that, so that when I'm home I can be with my son.
Providing a 25% extra "survivor bonus" (i.e. women who made it from postdoc to faculty) will not only make having domestic help affordable, but have the added benefit of normalizing salaries between men and women!!
Comment from Margaret Walton-Roberts, Wilfrid Laurier University:
A comment. My son was 6 weeks old when I was invited for an interview at Wilfrid Laurier University, in Ontario, Canada. I was a few months away from completing my PhD. I told the hiring committee I could only attend if they paid for my partner to travel with me. They did cover the costs for this, and I took it as an excellent sign that this was a supportive department. I was offered the job and allowed to defer the start date to January, when my son was 7 months old, and my husband stayed home with him for the next 11 months. In Canada parents can take a year's leave with (albeit limited) benefits, and so the state suports working couples in the first year (subsequently a $7,000 tax credit is allowed annually for childcare costs). My institution is also supportive, and has a package of supplemental maternity and parental benefits, and has recently developed a university childcare centre. These are just some ways in which academic institutions (and the state) can support parents.
Comment from Anonymous:
Actually I'd like to suggest a solution, if imperfect, not a question: Consider freezing embryos before age 35 (or as soon as possible), thereby freezing the biological clock. The technology is becoming quite reliable. Make sure you choose a facility with a good record of live births from frozen embryos by getting expert advice and checking the stats linked to www.asrm.com. Frustrated by failures with women in their late 30's and early 40's who try to conceive too late, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine started an advertising campaign to urge women to freeze embryos before age 35, if possible. Because of political concerns, communications networks refused to run the ads. But it's still a good idea.
Question from Kate Quinn, University of Washington:
My research has shown that, even at institutions that permit faculty to be part-time on the tenure track, extremely few women (or men) make use of these policies. My assumption is that there is something about climate and culture at the department level that is stubbornly clinging to "ideal worker" norms and sabotaging institutional efforts to support faculty with care-giving responsibilities. From your research, would you say that this is an accurate assessment and do you have recommendations for transforming departmental climate and culture?
Mary Ann Mason:
Yes. It is also our observation that part-time tenure-track positions are rarely used, even when available. We believe that the best way this will become widely utilized is to offer the option across the career course to both men and women. For instance, the flexibility of dropping in and out of a tenure-track position for issues of eldercare, spousal or personal illness, etc., would be an attractive option for many during the course of their work lives – hence, making this option less stigmatized. In our UC survey, 43 percent of faculty indicated that they would be interested in a flexible part-time option.
Question from Anne Mitchell Whisnant, Duke University:
Thank you for raising a very important issue! What differences in women's experiences have you noted depending on type of institution? I assume things are much tougher at the research universities. What is the situation like for women at less prestigious schools, liberal-arts colleges, etc?
Mary Ann Mason:
Surprisingly, our national data show few differences with regard to family issues between different types of universities and even among the disciplines. Larger institutions sometimes can afford to be more generous because they have more resources.
Question from Ellen, graduate student:
When is the best time to have a child, given the schedule for finishing the doctorate, applying for jobs, working toward tenure?
Mary Ann Mason:
Our data show a family outcome trade-off: While there is a disadvantage of having a child (“early baby”) anytime before five years post-Ph.D., women who delay are far less likely to have any children at all. Keep in mind that, although there is a statistical disadvantage, many women with children are also successful at achieving tenure.
Question from Saranna Thornton, Hampden-Sydney College:
For hundreds of years college faculty have been all male or almost all male. Like employees in many occupations they sought to negotiate for a workplace structure and benefits package that accommodated their needs. Although women have entered the professoriate in much larger numbers during the last 3 decades, they have not had much success in negotiating for a workplace structure and benefits packages that meet their needs. In part this appears to be a result of a double standard. A man who negotiates hard for and wins additional paid vacation leave, sick leave, phased retirement at full pay, etc. is roundly congratulated by his colleagues for getting the benefits he wanted. He is a "hero".
Yet a woman who negotiates hard for paid maternity leave, paid childrearing leave, a part-time work schedule at proportional pay, etc. is "whinny" and "not committed to her profession". Even if she wins the benefits she wants, she is tainted because she asked for them in the first place.
How do we change the culture of the academic workplace to make it clear that women who want family-friendly work places are just doing the same thing men have done for over one hundred years -- trying to negotiate for a workplace that meets their needs?
Mary Ann Mason:
Our approach is to frame family-friendly issues as benefiting both men and women. We need to make the case that the best and brightest faculty will be recruited and retained by institutions that offer the best family-friendly policies. As an example of this, 43 percent of UC faculty stated their interest in a flexible part-time ladder-rank option.
Comment from Saranna Thornton, Hampden-Sydney College:
Comment.
Many thanks to Mary Ann Mason and Robin Wilson for all the hard work they have done to highlight the issue of work family balance for academics.
I'd like to add two comments from my experience.
1. My husband is a nurse and when I got pregnant with my first child he promised to do EVERTHING, but nurse the baby. What I discovered after about 3 days was that 75% of the time we spent taking care of our new baby involved nursing. So while I appreciated his offer, my experience is that if you are breastfeeding having a partner share the actual work of child care isn't much help. (Although a partner could offer to take over more of the work of taking care of the house, doing laundry, cooking, etc.)
2. The FMLA is a possible source of childrearing leave that can be used in the first year, and which is an entitlement for women faculty who are working full-time and who have been employed by their current institution for at least 12 months (need not be consecutive). Although FMLA leave is unpaid, one option to gain time and not lose a lot of salary is to work part time at proportional pay. I worked 50% time in the semester after my third child was born and 75% time in the semester after my fourth child was born using FMLA leave. I had to take a small pay cut, and my institution didn't have the right to deny my request for FMLA leave.
For anyone seeking more info. on using FMLA leave in academia, the AAUP has published a guidebook.
Question from Stephanie, northeast research university:
I am a PhD candidate in the social sciences nearing completion of my degree. I am also a single parent to a 3-yr-old. I am wondering how my single-parent status will effect my job search next year. Will search committees view me as a risk for a full-time, tenure track position? Will they be concerned about my ability to contribute fully to teaching, research, and service? What can I do to alleviate any concerns that may arise during the interview process? (I know it's illegal for committees to directly ask questions about a candidate's personal life, but I'd like some advice in case I detect any ambivalence on a committee's part.) Thank you.
Mary Ann Mason:
I would suggest that you emphasize your greatest academic strengths and the important contributions you believe you can make to the department. Do not highlight your family situation but be straightforward if asked.
Question from Diana Jackson, U of Md:
were there any findings from the study that you found particularly surprising?
Mary Ann Mason:
It surprised me how much family formation advances men’s careers, while having children remains a distinct disadvantage to women’s careers.
Question from Robyn Beck Dietter, University of Virginia:
Have you ever found yourself discriminated against because of your “mother” status? Can you cite specific examples, in academe, of how mothers are treated differently from fathers?
Mary Ann Mason:
In my own case (and I think this is true for most mothers), the time constraints of parenting sometimes marginalized me in my department. For example, I was not always able to attend meetings held in the evenings or at times that conflicted with my children’s schedules. Although our data do not report on this issue, it seemed to me that mothers are less likely to be appointed as chairs to important committees or asked to assume other career-advancing responsibilities, for the reasons noted.
Question from Corinne, Midwestern University:
Why do married men with babies fare so well?
Mary Ann Mason:
Our data do not provide explanations but my father always said, “Marriage settles a man and children straighten him out.” The real story probably is that almost 50 percent of married men professors have wives who are not working outside the home or work only part-time, compared with only 10 percent of married women professors.
Question from graduate student, Emory University:
I had my children during my graduate studies, and am now finishing up my dissertation--ten years after I started my doctoral program. Because I was unable to do much academic work for several years, I think of myself as a re-entry woman also, and the gap in my resume is represented by the length of time I am spending getting my degree. I have seen little discussion of the difficulty for mothers of thinking of oneself as a scholar again, and dedicating creative thought and time to academic endeavors once again. During the early years of my children's lives (they are now 9 and 5 years old), my life was oriented around family needs and the part-time and full-time positions in academic admistration that I took to make ends meet. Because I was past coursework for most of that time, I was not on campus often; most of my friends were other mothers--in fact, every person I saw socially was another parent: since there was little money for childcare, we did things as a family, and our social occasions were family affairs. Now that they are in pre-K and elementary school, I can change the orientation of my life, but I am finding it extraordinarily difficult to do so. Have you or the women you have spoken with dealt with this, and if so, what strategies have you found that are helpful for this time of personal and professional transition?
Mary Ann Mason:
I consider this one of the most important issues in reforming the academic workplace. Most women need to have a reduced schedule when they are raising children, and there are no provisions to encourage them to re-enter academia. One of our initiatives here at UC is a re-entry postdoc program. I also believe that professional associations should have outreach to re-entry women and offer special sections devoted to bringing them back into the profession.
Question from La'Tonya Rease Miles, UCLA:
Does your study provide an ethnic or racial breakdown? I would imagine that the problems that you describe may be a huge deterrent to particular communities, especially Latinas.
Mary Ann Mason:
Yes, it does, and we are planning to study this important issue in the future.
Question from Michelle Massé, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge:
I'm co-chair of the Modern Language Association's Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession, and we've been working on a project whose focus is associate professors. As part of this, we've had panels at our recent conferences on topics such as "Family Leave Policies: Balancing Acts and Best Practices," and "Family Policies: Beyond Maternity Leave."
Both at our panels, and in reading groups on my campus, when we discuss these issues via essays such as yours in Academe, one of the most difficult parts is students' questions about the "right" time to have children, or the inevitable self-questioning about whether they should continue their academic careers. What are some of the ways in which you make students or junior colleagues aware of these realities without suggesting that they abandon all hope, whether as parents or as scholars?
The graphics in the Academe essay are brilliant, by the way.
Mary Ann Mason:
While we point out the negative effects of family formation on career advancement in order to promote workplace change, we should not lose sight of the fact that many women with children do succeed. I am conducting further research on women’s success stories in academia so that positive strategies can be shared.
Robin Wilson (Moderator):
I hope all of you found this chat interesting and informative. Thanks so much to Mary Ann Mason for taking the time to 'speak' to all of us.
Mary Ann Mason:
I very much enjoyed this session. You all have asked important and penetrating questions. I hope this discussion has been useful to you. We thank The Chronicle of Higher Education for making possible this opportunity to continue the discourse.
Copyright © 2008 by The Chronicle of Higher Education