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[dismalist]

Just increase pay of the types of people you wish to promote. Watch the numbers change!

[doctor_torrseal]

Just increase pay of the types of people you wish to promote. Watch the numbers change!

Okay, since it would be discriminatory to pay women and minority scientists more than male scientists, we'll simply peg the pay of all science professors to be twice the average salary of economics professors on a comparable-institution basis.  Sounds like a good start for recruitment.



But seriously, highly-qualified minority candidates are fought over by universities, in other words they have good job prospects if they make it all the way through the years of education and training.  Yet there are still relatively few under-represented minorities in the professoriat, and that's true of fields outside the sciences too.  So a simple economic model in which increasing compensation increases representation doesn't appear to describe the situation.  This is why I said that early outreach is needed.  If you try to fix this only at the faculty-hiring stage, you're waiting too long.

[takapa]

What were the percentages before Rosser got there?

I'm in agreement with most of the postings to this thread, but since herophilus asked, in 1999 at the beginning of her time there, there were 29 women on the tenured/tenure track (31% of all faculty at the time) in the Ivan Allen college; in 2008 there were 49 (42% of all faculty in the college at the time).  Of course, who knows what the numbers would have been if someone else were at the helm.

[herophilus]

There doesn't seem sufficient basis, in these numbers at least, for the OP's disparagement of Rosser's accomplishments there. 

This reminds me that I need to write a laudatory press release about myself and convince the Chronicle to publish it as an article under on of their author's bylines.

I distinctly recall that there was an announcement of your new position, and that it was under another author's byline.

[drannmaria]

Just increase pay of the types of people you wish to promote. Watch the numbers change!

Okay, since it would be discriminatory to pay women and minority scientists more than male scientists, we'll simply peg the pay of all science professors to be twice the average salary of economics professors on a comparable-institution basis.  Sounds like a good start for recruitment.



But seriously, highly-qualified minority candidates are fought over by universities, in other words they have good job prospects if they make it all the way through the years of education and training.  Yet there are still relatively few under-represented minorities in the professoriat, and that's true of fields outside the sciences too.  So a simple economic model in which increasing compensation increases representation doesn't appear to describe the situation.  This is why I said that early outreach is needed.  If you try to fix this only at the faculty-hiring stage, you're waiting too long.

Wonder if you can give me a list of those institutions fighting over highly-qualified minority candidates. I do have a full-time position. With a Ph.D., publications, decades of experience, extramural funding, I'd be happy to be fought over. Yes, I am female AND a minority.  It does not feel like an advantage at all. Yes, I have always had a full-time position, but that is probably a lot more because there is a shortage in my field than anything else, and I did all the "right" things - Ph.D. from reputable program, articles in the "right" journals and so on. I left academe for business and now I teach part-time because I enjoy it and the extra money is a nice benefit.

I did not see any difference in the number and types of opportunities I have received compared to my white friends, male or female. All of us got jobs and eventually tenure. None of us are at Harvard. So, I would say we all did okay, as we sort of expected getting Ph.D.'s in a technical or scientific field. Those who went into business made more money, again, no surprise.

Once hired, though, I have seen substantial differential treatment in the workplace where I have plenty of experience being treated as if I am not terribly bright. Let me give one example that has been repeated so many times in my career that I am thinking of making up a card or stamp to deal with it,

I submitted a computer program I had written for a project and was told by the Project Director that he would like to have Mr ___ approve it. Mr. ____ is a junior colleague on the project. He has a masters degree in an unrelated field and a couple of years of experience in this field, where I have over 20.

At this point, my department chair stepped in and asked to speak to the Project Director privately, they came back and told me that the program was great and needed no further approval.

People don't fight over me. Some people I work with are terrific. Some people are a pain. I am called on to prove my qualifications on a regular basis. So, it is pretty much like being white and male but with more aggravations like the example above.

[doctor_torrseal]

Just increase pay of the types of people you wish to promote. Watch the numbers change!

Okay, since it would be discriminatory to pay women and minority scientists more than male scientists, we'll simply peg the pay of all science professors to be twice the average salary of economics professors on a comparable-institution basis.  Sounds like a good start for recruitment.



But seriously, highly-qualified minority candidates are fought over by universities, in other words they have good job prospects if they make it all the way through the years of education and training.  Yet there are still relatively few under-represented minorities in the professoriat, and that's true of fields outside the sciences too.  So a simple economic model in which increasing compensation increases representation doesn't appear to describe the situation.  This is why I said that early outreach is needed.  If you try to fix this only at the faculty-hiring stage, you're waiting too long.

Wonder if you can give me a list of those institutions fighting over highly-qualified minority candidates. I do have a full-time position. With a Ph.D., publications, decades of experience, extramural funding, I'd be happy to be fought over. Yes, I am female AND a minority.  It does not feel like an advantage at all. Yes, I have always had a full-time position, but that is probably a lot more because there is a shortage in my field than anything else, and I did all the "right" things - Ph.D. from reputable program, articles in the "right" journals and so on. I left academe for business and now I teach part-time because I enjoy it and the extra money is a nice benefit.

I did not see any difference in the number and types of opportunities I have received compared to my white friends, male or female. All of us got jobs and eventually tenure. None of us are at Harvard. So, I would say we all did okay, as we sort of expected getting Ph.D.'s in a technical or scientific field. Those who went into business made more money, again, no surprise.

Once hired, though, I have seen substantial differential treatment in the workplace where I have plenty of experience being treated as if I am not terribly bright. Let me give one example that has been repeated so many times in my career that I am thinking of making up a card or stamp to deal with it,

I submitted a computer program I had written for a project and was told by the Project Director that he would like to have Mr ___ approve it. Mr. ____ is a junior colleague on the project. He has a masters degree in an unrelated field and a couple of years of experience in this field, where I have over 20.

At this point, my department chair stepped in and asked to speak to the Project Director privately, they came back and told me that the program was great and needed no further approval.

People don't fight over me. Some people I work with are terrific. Some people are a pain. I am called on to prove my qualifications on a regular basis. So, it is pretty much like being white and male but with more aggravations like the example above.

I don't feel that my observations and yours are in contradiction.  Although universities compete over "hot" candidates, it doesn't mean that the candidates once hired have overcome all residual discrimination and everyone will live happily ever after.  The same obstacles to getting women and under-represented minorities into the PhD pipeline in the sciences continue to operate after the PhD and after the faculty hire.  These obstacles are why AA as a consideration in the faculty hiring process is well-justified.  My argument is that that isn't enough, because addressing the problem only at the faculty hiring stage isn't a grass-roots approach, so to speak.  One of your points, I think, is that it should also be addressed after the faculty hiring stage, and that also is very important.

For reasons that I hope are obvious, though institutions have competed to hire friends or acquaintances of mine who are women or under-represented minorities in the sciences, I can't name them here.  Not just because of the outing issue, but because some would take it as questioning the qualifications of the hirees, even though I think they are all highly qualified.  How do we know if gender or ethnicity led to institutions competing over them?  Except in cases where you hear second-hand "The Dean will let us make two hires this year if at least one is a woman," you can't know, and it doesn't make up for past slights.  (I did hear that, third-hand.)  But at an institutional level, I believe it does happen.

[spork]

Women are underrepresented in coal mining, too.

I have worked tirelessly for decades to improve the diversity of coal mining by choosing not to work as a coal miner.

[locutus]

If you try to fix this only at the faculty-hiring stage, you're waiting too long.

Definitely. If anything the faculty hiring stage is the least important place to be taking any action. Give me some middle-school outreach, some programs for 1rst generation college students, etc.

[polly_mer]

I received something in my email yesterday that might be of interest to people on this thread.

INVITATION
Briefing of NEW National Academies Report
Gender Differences at Critical Transitions in the Careers of Science, Engineering,
and Mathematics Faculty

Tuesday, June 2, 2009
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM

100 Keck Center, National Academies
500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001

         Key Points:

 *   It is a Congressionally Mandated Report on Career Differences between Male and Female Faculty in Six Disciplines – biology, chemistry, civil engineering, electrical engineering, mathematics, and physics.
 *   The findings are from Survey Data collected in 2004-2005 from Faculty and
Departments on Critical Transitions for Tenure–Track and Tenured Faculty including hiring, promotion, tenure and institutional resource allocation.
 *   The report provides a Snapshot of the Status of Female Faculty at Top Research Universities and clarifies to what extent male and female faculty have similar experiences and opportunities.

Speakers:
Ralph J. Cicerone, President, National Academy of Sciences
Claude Canizares, Co-Chair, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Sally Shaywitz, Co-Chair, Yale University School of Medicine


The briefing is free and open to the public. To RSVP and for additional information, please contact Jacqueline Martin at jmartin@nas.edu<mailto:jmartin@nas.edu> or  202-334-1628.
Committee on Gender Differences in Careers of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics Faculty
Committee on Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine
Committee on National Statistics
The National Academies,  500 Fifth Street, NW,  Keck 100,  Washington, DC  20001


I don't have any further information, but it does seem that this report would be relevant to the discussion at hand.

[polly_mer]

The report from the National Research Council is out.  They find that the biggest problem is women falling out of the pipeline, not discrimination against women in the pipeline.  The report itself is not available for free, but the summary released to the press can be found here.  The briefing slides are more illuminating and can be found here.  An mp3 of the briefing itself can be downloaded from the National Academies homepage.

Three things that struck me as surprising in these findings.  First, many of the efforts to attract more women to academic positions have little or no effect (the point relevant to the CHE article praising the efforts of the provost) although having more women in a department is correlated with getting more women in a department.

Second, the percentage of women who are in the pool for academic jobs is lower for the 6 fields investigated than the percentage of Ph.D. holders who are women, indicating that women are not applying for these positions at R1 institutions.  Biology is a good example of this with 45% of recent Ph.D.s being women, but only 26% of applicants for academic positions were women (percentages are based on means).  However, for all six fields, women were interviewed and hired at rates above their representation in the applicant pool.  The most striking examples are chemistry (32% of recent Ph.D.s are women, 18% of applicants were women, 25% of applicants invited to interview were women, and 34% of offers went to women) and electrical engineering (12%, 11%, 19%, and 32%).  Consequently, women who applied had an advantage over the men in getting hired, but the applicant pools were not usually representative of the possible candidates. 

Third, the factor that made the most difference in getting resources was mentoring.  Men who were not mentored had comparable probabilities of obtaining grant funding to mentored men (86% to 83%, yes, the mentored men have slightly lower rates).  Women who were not mentored had much lower rates (mentored women had a 93% probability of having funded grants while unmentored women had a 68% probability). 

Women spent longer at assistant professor levels, but it's unclear whether that was a result of personal choices like using family leave to stop the tenure clock and spending more time in the post-doc phase or external factors.

I conclude from reading the summary that women are still underrepresented, the people who should cry institutional bias are men, and the likely best solution is encouraging mentoring on an individual level, not implementing more institutional touchy-feely diversity programs.