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Despite the time, a crowd of around 30 gathered in 101 McCormick Hall early Friday morning for the Alumni-Faculty Forum on Women in Science, held as part of the University’s Reunions programming.
“All of you are really here because you care about the discussion,” panel moderator and molecular biology professor Virginia Zakian said in her introduction, referencing the 9:15 a.m. start time.
Panelists included Sylvia Stevenson Adelman ’76, a senior research associate at E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, Charles DiLiberti ’81, director of scientific affairs at Barr Labs, Inc., Karen Drexler ’81, chairman of the CellScape Corporation, Yvonne Ng ’91, an assistant professor of engineering and computer science at St. Catherine University in Saint Paul, Minn., and Audrey Ellerbee ’01, an assistant professor at E.L. Ginzton Laboratory.
The panel was originally titled, “Women in Science: Why You Should Care.” Alumni Council representative Cheryl Rowe-Rendleman ’81 explained the choice, noting that the aim of the discussion was to understand “why there are reasons to care” and encouraging alumni audience members to sign up as mentors for undergraduate and graduate students at the University as part of a vertical mentoring program.
The idea of mentorship was discussed repeatedly throughout the forum. Ellerbee emphasized the importance of professor feedback in addition to grading.
“It might not just be the grade itself that matters, but the message around the grade,” Ellerbee said. “Some sort of intervention is needed ... a positive reinforcement that says this is not just an A, this is an exceptional piece of work.”
Drexler acts as a mentor and adviser for young female scientists who are interested in starting their own companies. She noted that the young women she works with often temper their expectations about their futures before they have even started working.
“Right out of the gate, they either decide that they’re not going to be able to have a family, or they’re not going to be ambitious about their career,” Drexler explained. “And this just breaks my heart.”
In discussing this attitude, several panelists referenced to the pipeline phenomenon, a model that tracks a decrease in the number of women in science and engineering programs at every level, from elementary school to the process of obtaining tenure.
DiLiberti ’81, who was the only male panelist, drew upon his experience with his own daughter to explain the phenomenon.
“Girls tend to develop social skills earlier than boys,” DiLiberti said. “My own daughter was a whiz at math. In third grade, she was asking me about logarithms ... and she had a voracious appetite for learning about math. That interest faded away, concurrent with her rising interest with hanging out with her friends, around fifth or sixth grade.”
DiLiberti added that he would have liked to place his daughter in a gifted and talented girls-only education program to sustain her interest in math.
“If you couple the learning and the science and math with a social environment, it can help to maintain that interest in girls,” he said.
Ng, who works at the largest women’s university in the country, pointed to increased parental influence as a way to remedy the low percentage of women in science and engineering.
Ng has written a book, titled “Engineering for the Uninitiated,” due to be published in June, that is directed toward parents with no experience or knowledge of engineering. The book is written with an eye toward parents of elementary-school-age children and discusses everything from the business aspects of the profession to the social barriers some individuals face in pursuing an engineering career.
Ultimately, the impetus for bringing more women into science and engineering fields must be their own passion for the subject, Adelman said.
“I’m not old enough to retire yet, even though I’m one of the older alumni,” Stevenson explained, laughing. “When you decide what you want to do, make sure it’s something that you love.”
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