This award provides support for a workshop entitled ?Gender Equity in Materials Science and Engineering at Universities and National Laboratories? to be held at the University of Maryland Conference Center from May 18-20, 2008. The workshop will address gender equity issues and identify major barriers that make science and engineering careers unattractive to women. Included among the topics to be discussed are: current status of gender equity in universities, MSE in particular, improving Workplace environment, balancing work and family life, increasing the pipeline of women in MSE, and current approaches to gender equity. The workshop will consist of keynote speeches, topical talks, panel discussions, and break-out sessions, which will include participants from universities, national laboratories, professional societies and funding agencies. The anticipated outcome is the development of a series of recommendations and plans for policy changes to address the problem of gender equity, biases and have transformational impact on gender equity in the MSE community. A final report of the workshop will be published and it will contain the findings and recommendations from the workshop discussions for recruiting, hiring, and retaining women in MSE workforce at all levels. The expected outcome of the workshop is specific efforts in the coming years to increase the number of women opting for MSE-related careers in academe and national laboratories. This award is jointly funded by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences in the Department of Energy and by the Division of Materials Research and the Engineering Directorate in National Science Foundation. The workshop is co-sponsored by DoE , NSF and the University Materials Council.
