April 20, 2007

Toward the right mix: Women in chemistry

By Andy Fell

When Karen McDonald was recruited to UC Davis in 1985, the campus issued a press release about it. Today, her department — Chemical Engineering and Materials Science — and the Department of Chemistry have some of the nation's highest ratios of female faculty, when compared with similar departments at other schools.

A sign of how much progress has been made on the issue might be that it does not seem to be much of an issue.

"I guess I don't think about it very much," said Professor Susan Kauzlarich, who in 1987 was the second woman to be hired by UC Davis' chemistry department.

"It's a factor in that it is not a factor," said Sheila David, professor of chemistry, who joined the department in 2006.

Chemistry currently has 10 women in ladder-rank faculty positions, out of a total of 38 faculty, with another new hire to arrive this fall. Chemical Engineering and Materials Science has eight women faculty in a total of 31, including joint appointments.

Nationally, those numbers are far from average. Chemistry departments nationwide average 12 perccent to 13 percent female faculty, said Neil Schore, vice chair of the chemistry department. Among research universities, the UC Davis chemistry department is in the top three in the nation in numbers of women faculty.

Similarly, a survey by the Council for Chemical Research showed that UC Davis' Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science had twice as many women as any similar department, said department Chair Robert Powell.

Nationally, women tend to be at the junior assistant or associate professor level. But among this group of 18 at UC Davis, there are 13 full professors, including a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Ask why, and you will get a range of answers. Open, civil and diverse departmental cultures, a town seen as a good environment for families, and family-friendly policies may all have helped.

"Interdisciplinarity helps — if you interact with people who are different from you, it's easier to accept that not everyone is your clone," said Alexandra Navrotsky, who is a professor in both departments as well as in Geology and Land, Air and Water Resources.

"For whatever reason, we've reached a tipping point in our department," added Kauzlarich of the chemistry department. "It changes the flavor of the department."

There are other advantages, David said. Chairs will often look for women and minorities to serve on their committees, and female graduate students will ask for women professors on their thesis committees. A deeper bench of female faculty means that load is more widely shared.

Having more women on the faculty means more women on search committees and that candidates meet more women when they visit, Kauzlarich said. Prospective recruits — as well as students — see a diverse faculty.

"It does tell you something about a department — that they are open-minded, about science and about other things," said David.

Family factors matter to many female candidates. McDonald and her husband had an infant when she joined UC Davis, and their second child was born before she was tenured. It was a busy and stressful time, and she looked to a campuswide group of women for support. More flexibility in the tenure process, such as the "stop the clock" option, has reduced the stress level, she said.

The Partner Opportunity Program, which helps spouses and partners of prospective or current faculty find positions, is also important. For example, both David and Professor Jacquelyn Gervay-Hague, who arrived at UC Davis in 2001, have spouses working in the same department. That is easier to achieve in a large department, David said.

In 2005, Schore represented the chemistry department at a federally sponsored workshop on gender equity in academic chemistry. Many institutions are unaware of the issues facing women, especially at the start of their careers and if they are trying to have a life away from work, he said.

"It's astonishing," Schore said. "A lot of places haven't caught up."

But there are a lot of gender-neutral ideas that have the effect of making a campus friendlier to female faculty, he said. Those include tenure flexibility and work/life balance programs, but also things as simple as not scheduling meetings in the evening.

Looking across campus, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and Materials Science do well within their colleges. Combining tenure-track and tenured positions as of Oct. 31, 2006, 20 percent of the faculty of the Division of Mathematical and Physical Sciences and 14.9 percent of the faculty of the College of Engineering were women, compared with 29 percent in the College of Biological Sciences, 24 percent in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, 23 percent in the School of Medicine, 30 percent in the School of Veterinary Medicine, and 52.6 percent in the Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies.

Marty West, a professor in the UC Davis School of Law who studies gender equity in academia, said that the Departments of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and Civil and Environmental Engineering had done particularly well, with a percentage of female faculty at or above the percentage of women with recent Ph.D.s in those areas. Chemistry has not yet reached parity with the Ph.D. pool, although doing better than departments at comparable universities.

"For some reason, chemistry has been a difficult field for women with doctorates to break into," West said.

In recruiting new faculty, both departments say they have just gone after the best.

"We've been lucky to have outstanding candidates," said Gervay-Hague.

"I think we've given offers to the best candidates, and it happens that the women candidates that we've seen have been very good," said Marjorie Longo, a professor in Chemical Engineering and Materials Science. "Hopefully we are leading a trend — there are still chemical engineering programs with no or very few women on the faculty."

Student demographics are also changing. In 2005, 34 percent of Ph.D.s in chemistry, 22 percent in materials engineering and 24 percent in chemical engineering were awarded to women, according to the National Science Foundation. Longo said her undergraduate classes were about 50 percent women, although she had noticed a recent drop in female Ph.D. applicants as graduate programs in biomedical engineering become more popular.

McDonald feels that in her career, she never experienced faculty steering her away from engineering. But on the other hand, she did not have any female role models, either.

It is good for undergraduates to see more women on the faculty, because it encourages them to go into the field, McDonald said. "The more women consider it, the more will go into it, and more turn up as faculty."

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