COACH: Lowering the Activation Energy for Women in Chemistry

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COACH Lowering the Activation Energy for
Women in Chemistry

• Kate Scantlebury
• University of Delaware
• Department of Chemistry Biochemistry
• Newark, DE, 19716
• Presentation at ACS 224th National Meeting
  Boston, MA, August 2002

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Women in Academic Chemistry

• 1993, 16 of faculty in 4 year colleges (7 in
  1973).
• 80 women of the 2380 full professors at Ph. D.
  institutions.
• 54 women of 2000 faculty at 284 B. Sc.
  institutions.
• 6.8 of chemistry department chairs are female.

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COACh Survey Participants

• 45 years (st dev 6.8 yr)
• Mostly White from 31 states
• Settings, 33 Urban, 22 Suburban, 16 rural, 5
  (other, small city)
• 6 years in current position (st dev 5 yr)
• 45 _at_ Research I or II Universities, 8 _at_ 4 year
  colleges, 1 _at_ Community College

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Achieving Styles

• Direct
• Intrinsic, Competitive, Power
• Instrumental
• Personal, Social, Reliant
• Relational
• Collaborative, Contributory, Vicarious

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Direct

• Intrinsic
• confront tasks directly and personally
• rely primarily on themselves
• take satisfaction from doing a task well
• style used most by COACh (X 5.0, /- .6, cf
  National X 5.4)
• Competitive
• take charge and enjoy organizing individuals,
  resources, and tasks
• style used least by COACh (X 2.8, /- 1.0, cf
  National X 4.1)
• Power
• only enjoy doing tasks well, winning the
  critical goal (X 4.2, /- 1.1, cf National X
  5.1)
• Scale 1Never , 7Always
• COACh N79
• National sample n1913, college-educated women

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Instrumental

• Personal
• recognition and reward
• use personal wit, charisma or intelligence to
  persuade others to engage and complete a task
  (X 4.0, /- 1.2, cf National X 4.6)
• Social
• offer and request help
• 2nd least used style used by COACh (X 3.3,
  /- 0.9, cf National X 4.1)
• Reliant
• seek advice from others to achieve goals(X 3.9,
  /- 0.9, cf National X 4.6)

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Relational

• Collaborative
• enjoy brain storming with others
• 2nd used style used by COACh(X 4.6, /- 1.2,
  cf National X 4.7)
• Contributory
• place others goals as primary to their own (X
  4.3, /- 1.0, cf National X 4.6)
• Vicarious
• achievers nurture the real or imagined
  relationship between themselves and the achiever
  (e.g parents, mentors) (X 4.3, /- 1.0, cf
  National X 4.7)

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Work Related Stress

• Access to resources
• Lack of recognition
• Sexism
• Personnel Issues

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Access to Resources

• New graduate students in our department were
  assigned as research assistants at a faculty
  meeting which I could not attend because of a
  family commitment. For the 4th time in 5 years,
  I was not assigned a student, despite my having
  funding available for 2 students, while some
  faculty were assigned 3 students.
• While I was on sabbatical, the department ( two
  people of the department) decided to give my
  research space to a new faculty member and have
  me move to a space in which I could not have
  worked. All with out discussion with me.

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Lack of Respect

• Despite enormous success last year (I recruited 3
  new faculty members), I was removed from being
  chair of the faculty search committee. Several
  male faculty came to my office to tell me that
  despite my success, I should be content with not
  being chosen for a leadership position within the
  Dept. or College. Even though I have the largest
  research program, and have contributed greatly to
  the Dept., my chair told me that I have made "no
  contribution" to the Dept. Being "ceilinged.
• My most stressful situations in my current
  position is trying to negotiate what I think is
  important in meetings with my colleagues, like
  faculty meetings. The discussions might be about
  hiring a new person or about lab space. It
  doesnt seem to matter about the exact subject.
  But I feel that I am personally attacked, and I
  back down. Then I am very frustrated later, and
  wish that I had acted differently, and feel like
  its too late to change anything - I missed my
  chance.

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Sexism Racism

• I was not considered as a serious Ph.D. student.
  While in academia as a tenure track faculty
  member, I was considered a "female faculty" or
  "minority hire" and dead-ended.
• At a recent faculty meeting we discussed whether
  or not to interview a candidate for a faculty
  position. Two male faculty members insisted on
  discussing her marital situation, engendering a
  heated discussion about what one is allowed to
  ask a candidate. One man said we needed to
  consider her husband because we had "wasted our
  time" interviewing another 'girl' who
  subsequently refused our offer.
• At a reappointment meeting, where the full
  professors met to discuss the progress of junior
  faculty, it became obvious that a colleague was
  evaluating the female faculty differently from
  the male faculty. ... The faculty member was
  asking different questions about their (females)
  progress, and holding them to a different
  standard.

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Personnel

• Negative personnel issues are very difficult for
  me. I have always hated "authority
  confrontations" from both sides of the fence.
• I have had to confront a graduate student who was
  not performing at an acceptable level.

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Work Experiences

• Family Career
• Lack of Mentoring
• Exclusion from informal networking

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Family Career

• In the eyes of the departmental administration I
  was no longer a faculty member but had become a
  pregnant female. There was no prior experience
  with the overlap set of pregnant faculty so the
  expectations of me were way out of line with how
  we normally treat faculty. I really felt like by
  having a child I had given up a lot of respect
  that I had worked very hard for.
• My graduate mentor was important in that she had
  a family and made it clear that it was possible
  to combine a science research career and family.

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Acknowledgements

• COACh participants Advisory Board
• Camille Henry Dreyfus Foundation
• NSF CHE 0078913
• DOE
• NIH
• MORE INFORMATION
• http//coach.uoregon.edu

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Mentoring

• I have colleagues who I talk with about misc
  things, but no one seems particularly interested
  in my research content. I have friends who are
  supportive and understanding, by there has not be
  anyone I can point to in my department or in the
  field with whom I share the kind of bond and
  sense of respect that I have shared with my
  non-science mentors from college. So again,
  though there are people I talk with, and some
  colleagues with whom I get along, there are none
  whom I could really say that I look to for
  guidance on how to be a scientist. Not the kind
  I think I might like to be.