EAGER: CeMENT as a Networking Experiment

University Of Kansas Center For Research Inc, Lawrence KS

Investigators

Abstract

This award funds research that will first evaluate the long-term record of a program designed to promote women's careers in science and then test hypotheses about the reasons for the long-term results. The Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (CSWEP) developed the CeMENT mentoring workshop in the 1990s to promote women's careers in economic science. CeMENT was created as a randomized controlled experiment, and evaluation of the first three cohorts has shown that the mentoring treatment enhanced participants' academic productivity. It is hypothesized that CeMENT improved outcomes for women because it: a) expanded professional collaborative networks; b) provided tacit knowledge that improved productivity; c) created professional support networks; d) some other mechanism not accounted for here; or e) all of the above. Women continue to be under-represented in the economics profession. This research will identify whether the mentoring program continues to have positive effects on the careers of women economists, and thus inform practices that seek to broaden the representation of women in the profession. The results will also help us identify specific mentoring methods that may be useful for other sciences that face similar issues. Economists have examined the association between networks and labor market outcomes, but few studies have identified the causal effects of networks because they are endogenously determined. The CeMENT program is designed to expand professional networks for both collaboration and support. It therefore provides an opportunity to examine the causal effect of an exogenous change in professional networks on the careers of female economists. The results will contribute to our knowledge of the impact of professional networks on scientific careers.