|
02.10
But You
Don't Look Like an Engineer...
By Sheila
S. Hemami and Marjolein C.H. van der Meulen
As female engineering
professors, we often find that people do a
double take when we tell them what we do.
"There are women?" they say. "In
engineering?" When we both started our careers,
in the mid-1990s, we thought women would be
better represented in engineering schools by
now. As the numbers at Cornell University and
nationwide show, we've come a long way but still
have further to go. In Cornell's College of
Engineering, nearly 30 professors are women.
This number corresponds to the national average
of 12 percent. Together we have a combined
career's worth of hiring experience in the two
largest departments in our college.
Our experiences motivated us to
pursue a National Science Foundation grant that
led to the formation of the CU-Advance Center.
The foundation's Advance program was started in
2001 to provide large, "institutional
transformation" awards to universities for
recruitment, retention, promotion, and
advancement of women in the sciences and
engineering. Through this activity we have met
many more female professors and seen hiring
practices across Cornell's other colleges. We
both spend a lot of time advising faculty
colleagues on how and why to hire diversely, and
would like to debunk some of the common myths we
frequently hear. While names have been omitted
to protect the innocent, nothing is fictitious
in this discussion.
Before tackling these myths,
we'd like to stress that today's hiring
determines the face of the engineering faculty
for the next 30 years. What does that face look
like in 2010? How do we want it to look in 2040?
In 2050? And what will our students look like?
These important questions require us to make
strategic and diverse faculty hires as we move
forward.
The Top 10 Myths About Hiring
Diversely
10. "It's the recruiting
committee's problem, not mine." Recruiting
is an activity in which all faculty members
should be continually engaged. We should be
contacting up-and-coming graduate students and
postdoctoral researchers at conferences and
through professional networks. Developing a
personal relationship with a young researcher as
she matures over the course of several years can
provide a substantial advantage when she is
deliberating over faculty job offers. It also
sends a positive message about departmental
climate and collegiality; not all senior
academics take the time or effort to reach out
to young researchers.
9. "We don't have any female
candidates because no women applied." To
continue the theme of No. 10, a "search
committee" is not an envelope- or
attachment-opening committee. Its members should
be actively using their department's database or
creating their own by polling their colleagues
locally and contacting others nationwide to cast
as broad a net as possible.
8. "Hiring women is the problem of female
professors." How many different ways can we say
this: All faculty members should be actively
engaged in the recruiting process.
7. "There are no women or
underrepresented minority scholars in our
field." Twenty years ago, and perhaps even
15 years ago, this statement was true in some
fields. Today, it is simply not true. When
challenged, we can and will identify outstanding
diverse candidates. After all, our competitors
do.
6. "Everybody knows the stars
in the field, and there aren't any women."
To quote from a 2009 New York Times article on
the subject, "you just have to pay attention."
In our own fields, we often hear there are no
women, even from individuals whose collaborators
include senior women. When we point these women
out, the response is inevitably: "Oh, yes, I
forgot about her ... and her. ... " This
statement is as unacceptable nowadays as No. 7.
5. "She'll never come here,
her husband is in (fill in the blank)." We
never discuss a man's spouse until the offer is
on the table, so let's treat women similarly.
Never superimpose your own behaviors onto others
by predicting how they might react to an offer.
Interview her, and when you make
the offer, do everything you can to woo them
both.
4. "She's signed, we got
her!" We know too well that retention starts
the instant an offer has been accepted. In
recent years at Cornell we lost two tenured
women whose partners were working elsewhere at
the time we hired them. Six years later when the
couples were still living apart, the women
looked for other jobs and left. This challenge
is not limited to women. Once a scholar has
agreed to join the faculty, the focus must
switch from recruitment to retention, which is
equally important.
3. "We want to hire a man,
but we'll also hire a woman if we get an extra
faculty line." Searches should consider all
candidates, and not relegate the hiring of women
to "extra" or "bonus" hires. If the woman is
good enough to hire, she's good enough for the
open line.
2. "Money is tight; we can't
afford to consider diversity." As we
previously mentioned, all searches should
consider all potential candidates. Considering
diversity is not a search option to be used only
when it's convenient.
1. "We need quality, not
diverse, faculty members." We'd like to say
that quality and diversity are completely
unrelated characteristics. In fact, they are
not. Numerous studies have shown that women are
held to higher standards than their male
counterparts, and in fact need to be more
productive than men to be seen as equally
productive. So the next time you are deciding
between a male and a female candidate, a
rational scientific decision would be to hire
the woman.
As published in
The Chronicle of Higher
Education, 29 January
2010, pg. A31, Vol. LVI, No. 20.
© 2010 Hemami and van
der Meulen. Reprinted here with permission from
the authors.
Sheila S. Hemami is a
professor in Cornell University's School of
Electrical and Computer Engineering. Marjolein
C.H. van der Meulen is a professor in Cornell's
Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace
Engineering. They are founders of the CU-Advance
Center, which promotes women in science and
engineering.
Comments may be submitted to
todaysengineer@ieee.org.
|
