This project institutes a three-year visiting professorship program in gender and the sciences--which includes the biological and physical sciences, mathematics, engineering, and provides semester-long visiting professorships, faculty-mentee fellowships, monthly faculty development seminars for a semester in nine science departments, and the development or revision of 36 introductory science courses affecting close to 4,000 undergraduate students during the initial funding period and thousands more within the next few years. The purpose of this project is to address the increasing shortage in scientific professionals by reaching, in their early college years, the "second tier"--defined by Sheila Tobias as that group of students who, though qualified to do science, routinely choose another major. The University of Wisconsin System Women's Studies Consortium focuses on two aspects of this problem: 1) the underrepresentation of the second tier, in general, and women and minorities, in particular, in scientific and technical fields; and 2) the factors--specifically the content, pedagogy, and climate--in introductory science courses which discourage the "second tier" from pursuing science majors. This project design is founded on the assumption that incorporation of the new scholarship about gender in the scientific canon and curriculum will improve the quality of the introductory courses which will, in turn, lead to the recruitment of more women, minorities, and others in the second tier to scientific education and careers.
