Epilog

I wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed the workshop, and that I learned a great deal from the shared experiences. I have to confess that for me personally, it was a rather bipolar experience. On the one hand, I took away a lot of ideas which I will apply in my own group and with my colleagues. On the other hand, this same information brought to my mind with sharp contrast how as a junior faculty member at my "startup" EE department at Santa Cruz, I received really none of the help that a junior faculty needs. This has motivated me positively to try to make sure that the same does not happen to incoming new faculty or students. Shortly after the workshop, in fact, I contacted my Dean (Steve Kang) and shared my experiences with him and encouraged that the material from the workshop be brought to the attention of the department chairs and faculty - This has since happened. So you could certainly say that this workshop will have a direct effect on mentoring of students and faculty at UCSC's young School of Engineering.

On a personal note, I was very pleased to meet colleagues from around the country, and in particular so many successful women academics, who will serve as role models for my own two young daughters as they grow. It was a unique way for me to gain more perspective on the challenges and experiences ahead.

Peyman Milanfar

UC Santa Cruz

The PAESMEM workshop was really a great experience for me. As a PhD student, I learned a lot from "Early and mid career mentoring and support," especially Lydia and Sheila's talks, as well as the discussions from the audience. They gave me a real idea about what the academic life will be like for female faculty who are working hard for tenure in a male-dominated area. The "Mentoring support" session the second day made me realize that a lot of things could be done at Georgia Tech's College of Computing to improve the opportunities for women students as my department seems to be the one with the lowest female/male student ratio (even worse than physics department) and the department is trying very hard to attract female undergraduate/graduate students and faculties. I have to admit that the "Work/family issues" is the apex of the workshop in my personal view. Every single presentation in this session draws a vivid picture of the success story of a female faculty. I think every CS/EE female PhD student should have an opportunity to watch the video of it if we had recorded it. It conveys the message clearly that life is hard for a female faculty but there is a way out. Choosing an academic life does not mean to sacrifice personal life.

I did not realize the importance of "imposter syndrome" talk by Valerie Young until I got back to Atlanta as I do not much believe in this kind of talk. Just a few months ago I discussed with my MentorNet mentor Elaine Weyuker about how men and women deal with unfair paper rejection differently. Women tend to blame themselves even if they feel the negative feedback is unjust. Elaine told me this to let me know not to be set back by this kind of things. At this workshop Lydia also spoke out from her experience that it is important not to take proposal rejection or other negative feedbacks from others personally. Just go ahead to do what you think is right for you. Valerie Young's presentation pointed out that we can change the way we think and face the challenges more confidently.

Yan Gu

Georgia Tech PhD Student

The PAESMEM workshop was very positive, encouraging and revealing. Among all the topics of presentations and discussions, those regarding mentoring of untenured faculty were extremely helpful to me. They were pertinent to my own situation of feeling uninformed, overwhelmed or sometimes frustrated: being told what needs to be done without a hint of how they can be done. I could project those common problems and difficulties that assistant faculty face in more objective and general perspective. I believe that this apprehension would be the first step toward finding positive solutions.

Yoonkyung Lee

Ohio State Assistant Professor

I really enjoyed the session on Mentoring Support -- because of all the resources mentioned that I was not aware of previously. That in itself made this session very informative. In particular, all the different databases that people can enter themselves into for academic searches really caught my eyes.

I really enjoyed seeing the success stories of these programs and the showcasing of the alumni and their accomplishments in academia. This showed to me that the strategies espoused in these programs surely are effective.

It was great to hear about the ADVANCE programs at different Universities. This was the first time that I found out about their existence and all the different levels of support that they provide.

Todd P. Coleman

MIT Graduate Student

There was little discussion at the workshop about the role that working industrial scientists and engineers can play in mentoring students through the degree process and into employment. Outside of MentorNet, it seems that the Universities don't do much to exploit this resource. The irony of it is that the majority of students will end up in industry, so it would seem highly appropriate to work harder to partner students with industry mentors. Perhaps the university alumni networks could be used as an avenue to partner students with suitable mentors. Note that MentorNet does a great job of this, but is largely aimed at women; it would be just as appropriate for male students!

Liesl Folks

Hitachi

The session that reverberated most with us was "Mentoring support: National and local resources for mentoring." It was encouraging to see how much was being done especially for female graduate students, but it was also a little disappointing in that many of us did not feel such support at Stanford. Because of this, the group of women attending from EE at Stanford has recently formed WEE (Women in Electrical Engineering, wee.stanford.edu).

This year WEE plans to hold a pizza lunch monthly, with an invited speaker to give students insight into various career paths of women with PhDs in EE and related fields. We're organizing a big sister program for incoming graduate EE women. Also, we're looking at statistics for various milestones for men and women in the department to identify areas that may need more attention.

We're very grateful for the ideas and inspiration we got at the PAESMEM workshop; this has helped shape out new group significantly.

Deirdre O'Brien, Taly Gilat Schmidt, Viola Rieke,

Hrefna Gunnarsdottir, Sarah Harriman

Stanford University, PhD Candidates