This proposal focuses on the experiences of emerging women scientists. It charts recent developments in Duke University's efforts to address the underrepresentation of women in science and it proposes a model project to open conversations about the mentor-student relationship. The design of the model project is based on a series of discussions among women scientists (faculty and graduate students) and between these scientists and this project's investigators. Advanced graduate students in science report to us that they confront mentoring practices and interpersonal behaviors which discourage their advancement. They argue that these practices and behaviors are seldom described or discussed openly among colleagues and so continue to influence women students' sense of their professional abilities and opportunities, even in the most well meaning of departments. Our goal is to initiate conversations within the science community about issues related to the education of women as scientists, in order to identify and define the daily obstacles encountered by graduate women in science, sensitize faculty advisers/mentors to these obstacles, discuss faculty advisers' and mentors' concerns about their interactions with graduate women, introduce emerging women scientists to the perspectives that inform diverse mentoring approaches and styles, and develop an approach to evaluating the educational environment for women.
