A Workshop to Address Underrepresentation of Women Faculty in Nanotechnology

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

This award provides funding to the Center for Workforce Development (CWD) at the University of Washington (UW) to conduct a path-breaking NSF Workshop to address the underrepresentation of women faculty in nanotech/nanoscience (NT/NS). The workshop will be held at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) headquarters in Washington, D.C. in September 2010 and will be under the direction of Dr. Suzanne G. Brainard. Women faculty of all ethnicities continue to be exceedingly underrepresented in STEM fields, with many U.S. university STEM departments having no minority women on their faculty at all. As an emerging, well-funded area of research that cuts across STEM disciplines, NT/NS provides an opportunity to (1) assess the representation of women in this emerging field and (2) investigate the various factors that influenced the educational and career pathways of different groups of women from a variety of STEM fields into the cutting-edge and cross-disciplinary area of NT/NS. The CWD proposes to organize and conduct a workshop to bring together social scientists, scientists and engineers to discuss the obstacles these women scientists and engineers face, to develop recommendations for effective strategies to recruit and advance women into STEM faculty in nanotechnology, and to develop a network of women faculty in nanotechology to encourage cross-institutional collaboration.