newsminer.com

Photo by John Wagner

FAIRBANKS — Women earn half of the bachelors’ degrees in science and engineering nationwide, but in 2003 only 29 percent of doctoral science and engineering faculty and 18 percent of full professors were women, according to the National Science Foundation.

The foundation started a program called ADVANCE, which aims to include more women in the science and engineering workforce. The University of Alaska Fairbanks is one of 10 colleges to receive a grant through the project, which supports the collection of data about the status of female faculty members in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Joy Morrison, director of the Office of Faculty Development, and Sine Anahita, chairwoman of the sociology department and women’s studies program, will be the lead researchers of the two-year, $140,000 study. Morrison said the time ill be used to conduct baseline research consisting of focus groups, interviews and surveys to get an accurate sense of the situation.

Morrison said she hopes to find if UAF could be hiring and retaining women for science programs. She said they also will contact women who have left the university in the last 10 years to find out why they left and will look at the start-up package offered to faculty. In addition, researchers will visit other universities of similar sizes and situations. Morrision said trips to the University of Texas-El Paso and New Mexico State University have been planned.

“It will start in September, and it will be an in-depth ethnographic study of institutional culture,” she said.

Depending on what Morrison and Anahita find by the end of the two-year period, the science foundation could deem UAF ready for an institutional transition. The transition is a three- to five-year process to develop and apply innovative and comprehensive programs to remove barriers for women at UAF.

Both researchers stress the study hasn’t started yet, and it is too early to make any definitive statements about UAF. Anahita said she and Morrison do not believe most men or university administrators are deliberately sexist, but UAF’s situation is similar to national trends, and there is only anecdotal evidence at UAF. The grant will allow the two to gather solid data.

According to a 2005 report from the UAF Faculty Senate Committee on the Status of Women, men were awarded tenure in five years on average while women were given tenure status in seven years, on average. It also found women were making 83 percent of what men earned at UAF. The university is barely better than the national average of 81 percent.

Anahita serves as chairwoman of the committee, which is dedicated to achieving gender equity at UAF.

Data from a New York Times article by John Tierney found women now make up half of all medical students, 60 percent of biology majors and earn the majority of doctorates in both life sciences and the social sciences. Women remain a minority in physical sciences and engineering, and although the number of women earning doctorates has tripled, women still make up less than 20 percent.

UAF Provost Susan Hendricks said there is a lower proportion of women in science and enginering disciplines but recent hiring trends are moving toward equality. Engineering is the only department with a considerable gap between female and male faculty members, Hendricks said. Only 10 percent of the UAF engineering faculty are women.

There are a good number of qualified women in the disciplines but fewer women are making it to each step in the multistep process of being hired at the university, Hendricks said.

In the science, engineering and math departments the numbers are getting better after a dismal record in the 1990s. Hendricks said budget cuts caused UAF to slow its hiring but as UAF’s economic situation changed so has its hiring.

“It’s really changed a lot in the last eight or 10 years,” Hendricks said.

Looking at the hiring process at UAF will be one of areas Morrison and Anahita will evaluate during their institutional enthographic approach. Ethnography uses field work to study human societies. Anahita said she is thankful for the grant and thinks this particular approach made their proposal stand out.

“We will use multiple data techniques to get a clear picture of women faculty at UAF,” Anahita said.