Amy Heard: Letters from the Gilded Age -- Advancing women at Virginia Tech through institutional transformation

Advancing women at Virginia Tech through institutional transformation

Advancing women at Virginia Tech through institutional transformation

Nancy G. Love and Tess Wynn

The Virginia Tech Advance Program mission statement is to Increase the number of women electing to pursue academic careers through empowerment and skill building programs, and by establishing a supportive climate that eliminates barriers to success.

The Advance Program has three principal goals:

to achieve sustainability by collaborating with the Graduate School
to improve the climate for women at Virginia Tech
to improve skills to achieve productive and healthy mentoring and networking practices.

Collaboration with the Graduate School

Current activities include programs that complement the "Preparing the Future Professoriate" (PFP) curriculum, work-life grants for graduate students, and focus group activities to define program development issues.

"The university community assumes all graduate students are single. There is little support or recognition for they pertain to graduate students." -- Graduate Student Focus Group Participant, May 2004.

Future activities include day care for graduate students with families; a series of speakers from a broad range of college and university settings to talk about academic careers; a conference in 2006 focused on advancing science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) women into academic careers; and formalized programs during graduate student recruitment weekend.

"I just don't see good examples of female role models. I wonder if I really want to be a professor." -- Graduate Student Focus Group Participant, May 2004

Improving the climate for women at Virginia Tech

Current activities include mentored postdoctoral and graduate student fellowship programs and a grass-roots effort to initiate a post- doctoral Research Associates Network. Future activities include formalization of a Post-Doctoral Research Associates Network and the establishment of a Council on Women that focuses on graduate student/post- doctoral student issues across STEM colleges.

"If you want to inspire postdocs to become faculty members, it would be helpful if some people who are already faculty gave us some insight into the reality of their job and how to succeed.-- Postdoctoral Research Associate, April 2004

Improving skills to achieve productive & healthy mentoring & networking practices

Current activities include facilitated networking lunches (peer and across groups). Future activities include skill building workshops for students and post-doctoral research associates and "How to be a mentor" for faculty!

"As a Ph.D. student, I participated in a program attended by women engineering faculty from 13 southeastern universities. It was awesome! That was the day that I first believed that I might actually be capable of succeeding as an engineering faculty member." -- Nancy Love, Associate Professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering, July 30, 2002

Robert M. Gray, September 12, 2004

Advancing women at Virginia Tech through institutional transformation