The primary goal of this proposal is to create a self-sustaining mentoring program for women in the Department of Biology at Arizona State University.
SWIS will be based on a vertical integration scheme where faculty, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students and undergraduates work together in a mentoring network to foster the advancement of women in biological research careers. The project is based upon two key observations. First, in the Biology Department, they have numerous unconnected resources that have not been used to the full advantage of mentoring women, particularly at the graduate and undergraduate level. With this proposal, they plan to consolidate resources in the Department and connect pre-existing resources in such a way that new opportunities for growth and mentoring will be created. Second, although the ASU Biology women faculty are leaders in their field and have been extremely successful at mentoring individual students, no one faculty member has sufficient time and energy to create a self-sustaining organization such as the proposed SWIS program.
The SWIS program has 2 components: the development of a mentoring network through a seminar series and invited seminar speakers, and the development of a mentoring workshop focused on issues pertaining to the successful recruiting and retaining of women in science careers. The former is seen as a mechanism to concentrate the efforts of individual women in the Biology Department, and the later as a mechanism to promote permanent cultural change.
This project is supported by the National Institutes of Health through the NSF ADVANCE Program. The overall mission of the ADVANCE Program is to increase the participation of women in the scientific and engineering workforce through the increased representation and advancement of women in academic science and engineering careers.
