Cathy Ann Trower Cathy Ann Trower There are few guarantees on the tenure track, but those who succeed are deliberate and systematic in helping themselves and others, seeking help and advice, being self-aware without being self-absorbed, and making themselves indispensable as departmental citizens. You've been hired onto the tenure track. That's no small achievement--but it is hoped that you alrea...
This, the fourth and final article in a series about women scientists in the academy, addresses two questions: Why does it matter that women leave science in larger numbers than men do? And what can we do about it? The first article in the series presented data about women in the academy and the results of a study (conducted by The Project on Faculty Appointments at Harvard University) that showe...
A confluence of factors, including heavily tenured-in departments, fewer tenure-track positions, demographic trends, and a glut of Ph.D.s looking for employment, have placed tremendous strain on junior faculty members, making the tenure barrier increasingly difficult to surmount. Teaching and research records that would have earned probationary faculty tenure at prestigious institutions several y...
This is the first in a series of three articles where I explore the academy as a place for women to work, in particular young female scholars in the sciences. Most women experience the academic culture differently from men and, as a consequence, they make different choices about faculty careers. This article highlights the extent of the problem. The second will explore the nature of the problem a...
This, the third article in a series about women scientists in the academy, attempts to answer the question, 'Why do women leave academic science in greater numbers than men?' The first article presented data on women in the academy and the results of a study (conducted by The Project on Faculty Appointments at Harvard) that showed that, all else being equal between two academic job offers, women ...
In a recent Chronicle of Higher Education "Career Network" piece (Woolston, 2001), a freelance science and medical writer wrote that the Ph.D. pipeline in the sciences is "equipped with a powerful female filtration system." The second in a series of four articles about women scientists in academia, this paper explores the extent of female filtration from U.S. academic science. For many years, aca...
