PCCW awards grants to women faculty, students

By Linda Grace-Kobas

The President's Council of Cornell Women (PCCW) at Cornell has awarded research grants to three faculty members and five graduate students to help advance the careers of women in academia through support of research leading to tenure and promotion and to the completion of dissertations.

Since the PCCW grants program was begun seven years ago, the alumni group has awarded a total of $191,000 to 104 women faculty and graduate students. Of the faculty members who have received PCCW grants, 85 percent are still at Cornell and several have moved up the tenure ladder. PCCW's ability to make these important awards has been due to members' annual contributions and a modest endowment. PCCW launched a two-year campaign in September 1997 to endow the grant program at a level that will sustain annual awards of $25,000.

Said Jan Rock Zubrow, current chair of the group: "One of PCCW's primary goals is to help Cornell increase the number of women in tenured faculty positions. The grant program is an outstanding effort to achieve this goal. Through it we support research excellence at Cornell and help talented women professors."

Faculty members who received 1998 PCCW grants and their research are:

• Patricia A. Johnson, associate professor of animal science, "A Model for Human Ovarian Cancer."

• Bonalyn J. Nelsen, assistant professor of organization studies in the Johnson Graduate School of Management, "An Ethnographic Analysis of the Technization of Work: A Research Agenda."

• Marjolein van der Meulen, assistant professor in mechanical and aerospace engineering, "In Vivo Measurement of Bone Stain: Pilot Study."

Graduate students receiving grants this year are:

• Maydianne C. Andrade, a Ph.D. candidate in neurobiology and behavior, "The Cost of Sexual Cannibalism for Male Redback Spiders: Is Every Copulation Equally Valuable?"

• Veronique Boisvert, a Ph.D. candidate in physics, "Study of Charmless Semileptonic B Meson Decay with the CLEO Detector."

• Viorica Marian, a Ph.D. candidate in psychology, "Within -- And Between -- Language Competition in Bilinguals' Language Processing."

• Olivia Davis Neel, a Ph.D. candidate in biochemistry and structural biology at Cornell Medical College, "A DNA Vector to Study Delta Hepatitis RNA Ligation in Cells."

• Vicki Ellen Szabo, a Ph.D. candidate in medieval studies, "The Quantification and Species Identification of Archaeological Whale Bone from Late Iron Age and Viking Orkney, Scotland."

PCCW was established in 1990 as an advisory council to the university's president, with the mission of advancing the involvement and leadership of women students, faculty, staff and alumnae. There are 332 members, invited by the president to serve three-year renewable terms. All current women trustees serve as ex-officio members.

The group has undertaken numerous projects to expand the role of women at the university and provide greater involvement for alumnae. Among its activities are the funding of 104 research studies and projects by women faculty and students, supporting the first student-written Cornell Women's Handbook, sponsoring the first Women in Leadership at Cornell conference in 1994, providing significant ongoing commitment for women athletes and advising Cornell's president on issues of importance to women.