By Paulette Clancy
The number of women faculty in the physical sciences and engineering at Cornell is around 10 percent, roughly the national average. In the last six years, the number of women faculty has doubled, indicating the commitment of individual departments and the college to create a more diverse faculty. However, hiring women faculty is only part of the "equation." As any good chemical engineer knows, the net mass in the system involves both accumulation (faculty hiring) and depletion terms (faculty loss). On the whole, faculty-retention issues have received less attention than hiring.
In order to retain women faculty in science and engineering, there are several key issues that we, as a university, need to address. One of the most crucial and complex involves finding creative ways to retain "dual career" couples. Six women faculty in science and engineering have left Cornell in the past six years largely because of such issues; this represents 20 percent of the number of women faculty in engineering today (but nearly 50 percent of the number in 1996!). More disturbingly, one science department at Cornell reports that, over the past eight years, 40 percent of the male faculty for whom dual-career issues were a major concern at the hiring stage were resolved with the woman partner accepting underemployment. In contrast, none of the women faculty in the same situation had partners accepting underemployment. One effective way to retain a women faculty member is to make sure that her partner also has a satisfying job. Two- or three-year incentives that bring faculty partners to Cornell without a planned long-term strategy to integrate them fully into their chosen community increases the chances of losing both partners. More strenuous efforts to create research incubator firms, such as those at the Research Park, could play a role in helping to recruit and retain women faculty (and their male colleagues). We should take a hard look at the strategies used by some of our peers -- Illinois is a good example -- who offer exceptional incentives for dual-career couples.
It is important to realize that women faculty are a scarce resource and hence their "vapor pressure" is higher. Women faculty receive many tempting offers to move post-hiring and, especially, post-tenure. While financial incentives are an obvious aid in faculty retention, we should not underestimate the value of positive feedback. As a community, university researchers are typically slow to tell others they are doing a good job. It is an unpleasant fact of life that the workplace for some women faculty at Cornell remains "chilly." Anything we can do to create a warmer environment could go a long way to help.
The social life in Ithaca is geared toward students and toward families, but can be limiting for young single professionals, men and women. It would help considerably if Cornell had a first-class faculty club with an active social program. We should accelerate plans to create a centrally located faculty club with an excellent wine cellar, a fitness center and an inviting atmosphere for off-duty socializing. We should organize social events that would attract a mix of young professionals, not only faculty from Cornell, but a diverse mix from local colleges and universities and local businesses, such as Corning.
Finally, there is the saying (expressed mathematically in Gibbs' nucleation theory) that "to those who have, more shall be given." The more women faculty in the college, the easier it will be to hire and retain them. The successes of civil and environmental engineering and, more recently, electrical and computer engineering and biological and environmental engineering, are proof of this. The situation for minority faculty mirrors these issues and the need for more underrepresented faculty is even more acute.
Clancy is a professor of chemical engineering at Cornell. The Diversity Digest is one of the services provided by the university's Diversity Council. For information about the council, this column, the council's newsletter or about diversity initiatives at Cornell, contact co-chairs Robert L. Harris Jr., vice provost for diversity and faculty development, at 255-5358 or rlh10@cornell.edu, or Lynette Chappell-Williams, director of the Office of Workforce Diversity, Equity and Life Quality, at 255-3976 or lc75@cornell.edu.
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