Transcript Document

Improving Recruitment of
Women Faculty in
Science and Engineering at MU
Mizzou ADVANCE STRIDE Committee Spring 2009
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under
Grant No. 0618977. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in
this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF.
Mizzou ADVANCE
Women faculty in MU’s Science
and Engineering Departments
120
U.S.
MU
84%
89%
16%
11%
72%
80%
29%
20%
65%
81%
100 %
80%
100%
Full
100
80%
60%
40%
20%
Percent
80
60
40
60%
0
87%
86%
85%
84%
84%
Male
Female
40%
Associate
20%
0%
20
0%
100 %
80%
60%
40%
20%
13%
14%
15%
16%
0%
16%
100 %
200 2
200 3
20 04
200 5
200 6
Female
Male
Percentage of female and male faculty in
seventeen MU science and engineering
2002 2003 (CAFNR,
2004 A&S
2005and2006
2007
departments
CoE, Oct
2006 data)
Assistant
2008
80%
60%
40%
20%
35%
0%
19%
Male
Male
Female
Female
MU compared to US ( NSF, 2003 data compared to
MU Oct 2006 data)
Sources: National Science Foundation, 2003; 10/31/2006 HR Census Date Employee File, MU Office of Institutional Research
Student populations are not
mirrored in the MU’s STEM faculty
100%
80%
62%
65%
60%
83%
Male
Female
40%
20%
38%
35%
17%
0%
Undergraduates
Graduate Students
Faculty
Sources: National Science Foundation, 2003; 10/31/2006 HR Census Date Employee File, MU Office of Institutional Research
Strategies: Phases of a Search
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Pre-search
Solicit applicants
Evaluate applicants
Select candidates to interview
Interview
Evaluate finalists
Make the offer
Close the deal
Pre-Search
• Choose a committee committed to diversity
• The charge: excellence, diversity, proactive recruiting
• Review past searches
– How many women applied? Interviewed?
– Offered? Hired? How compare to males?
• Define the position and prepare the advertisement
– As broadly as possible
– Convey departmental commitment to attracting women
candidates
– Emphasize ability to work with diverse students
Soliciting Applicants:
Broaden the pool
• Be aware of the MU Chancellor’s Diversity Initiative
• Consider candidates from wide range of institutions
• Consider established, but under-placed, women
faculty from lesser-ranked institutions than MU
• Place suitable value on non-traditional career paths
• Help generate a diverse pool
• Attend and speak at meetings-talk to potential women candidates
• Cultivate future candidates and mentors of future candidates
• Use directories of recent Ph.D.s available in the MU Office of Equity.
Soliciting Applicants:
Recruit actively
• Advertise for at least 30 days before deadline
• Advertise in venues that attract diverse
candidates
• Personal contacts: colleagues, possible
candidates
• Take advantage of rosters of female members
in professional organizations, recent PhD
graduates, fellowship recipients
Evaluating Applicants
• Learn about and discuss research on biases and
assumptions
• Develop explicit criteria and apply consistently to all
applicants
• Spend sufficient time evaluating each applicant
• Evaluate each candidate’s entire application
• Be able to defend every decision for eliminating or
advancing a candidate. Evaluate.
Learn about schemas
• Schemas are expectations or stereotypes that
define “average” members of a group
– Guide perceptions and behaviors
– Influence group members’ judgments about
themselves and others
• Widely culturally shared
– Both men and women have the
same schemas about gender
– People are often not aware
of schemas
Fiske (2002) Current Directions in Psychological Science. 11:123-128
Schemas are...
• Applied more under circumstances of:
– Ambiguity (including lack of information)
– Stress from competing tasks
– Time pressure
– Lack of critical mass
Fiske (2002) Current Directions in Psychological Science. 11:123-128
Schemas in action: Evaluation
of Identical CVs
When evaluating identical
application packages …
… both male and female
university psychology
professors preferred 2:1 to hire
“Brian” over “Karen.”
Steinpreis, Anders, & Ritzke (1999) Sex Roles, 41, 509.
Karen
Brian
Schemas in action: Evaluating
Fellowship Applications
Women had to be 2.5
times more productive
to receive the same
reviewer rating as the
average male applicant.
Wenneras & Wold (1997) Nature, 387, 341.
Similar findings:
• USA/GAO report on Peer Review in Federal Agency Grant Selection (1994)
• European Molecular Biology Organization Reports (2001)
• NIH Pioneer Awards: Journal of Women’s Health (2005) & Nature (August 2006)
Letters of Recommendation for Successful
Medical School Faculty Applicants
Letters for men:
•
•
•
•
•
Letters for women:
Longer
More references to CV
Publications
Patients
Colleagues
Trix & Psenka (2003) Discourse & Society, Vol 14(2): 191-220.
• Shorter
• More references to personal
life
• More irrelevancies, faint
praise, and hedges
“She is close to my wife.”
“It’s amazing how much
she’s accomplished.”
“It appears her health is
stable.”
Evaluating Applicants
• Periodically review your judgments
– Are women subject to different expectations in terms or
publication and productivity?
– Are candidates from lesser known institutions being undervalued?
– Are the accomplishments of women being under-valued or
unfairly attributed to research mentors or collaborators?
– Is the ability of women to run a research group, raise funds
and supervise students being underestimated?
– Are assumptions about family responsibilities negatively
influencing evaluation of merit, despite evidence of
productivity?
Choosing Candidates for Visit
• Use a detailed rating system to select candidates
• Develop a “medium” list from which to generate the
short list.
– Are there women on the list?
– If not, consider intensifying the search before moving on
to a short list.
• Consider making multiple short lists, each
emphasizing different criteria.
– Develop final short list by taking the top candidates
across different criteria.
– Is there evidence of evaluation bias?
Choosing Candidates for Visit
• Plan to interview more than one
woman.
–Research shows that interviewers
evaluate women more fairly when
more than one woman is in the
interview pool.
• Arrange for interviews to occur over
a short time frame.
Interviewing
• During the campus visit, one goal is to learn about
the candidate:
– Make sure candidates meet with a variety of faculty and
students in both formal and informal settings
– Ask some “standardized” questions during meetings
• Focus on candidate’s ability to perform essential functions of the
job
• Be sure to gather equivalent information from all candidates to
make comparisons easier
– Be aware of laws regarding questions about race, ethnic
background, religion, marital or familial status, age,
disability, sexual orientation or veteran status
Interviewing
• During the campus visit, another goal is to allow
the candidate to learn about your department and
MU:
– Designate a faculty member as host
– ADVANCE can help networking with females, if needed.
– Consider how the department represents itself in terms
of:
• Serving as a place where faculty, especially women, can thrive
• Having clear, public policies and procedures for evaluation and
promotion
• Mentoring for junior and tenured faculty
Evaluating Finalists
• Solicit feedback from faculty and students
who met the candidates
– Develop and use a form to get specific
information
– Ask questions about scholarship and
potential for success
• Be aware of possible biases in the
evaluations
Making the Offer
• Be open and honest in negotiating the offer.
• Be aware that women may have received less
mentoring than men about how to make
requests in negotiation.
– Consider appointing an advocate or mentor to
help candidates through the negotiation.
– To ensure equality, make sure the candidate
knows what items are negotiable.
Closing the Deal
• Pay attention to non-professional aspects
of the package
– If candidate has a partner who will need
placement help, try to help arrange
interviews / opportunities as early in
hiring process as possible.
– Be ready and open to share information
on other issues of concern to the
candidate.
After the Search
• If you successfully hire a woman:
– Consider the factors that contributed to the success
– Keep a record of what worked well for future
reference
• If the applicant pool was not as large or diverse
as you wanted, ask:
– Could the job description have been phrased
differently to attract more candidates?
– Could the department have recruited more actively?
– Were there criteria that were consistently not met by
the women candidates?
After the Search
• If a woman was offered the position, but
chose not to accept, what reasons did they
offer?
– Consider as many factors as you can
identify.
– Share those reasons with departmental
decision-makers
– Re-visit those reasons as part of the
initiating future searches.