HR: 1330h
AN: ED22D-1254    [PDF]
TI: Plugging the Leaks One at a Time
AU: * Purdy, G M
EM: mpurdy@ldeo.columbia.edu
AF: Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, 61 Route 9W, Palisades, NY 10964 United States
AU: Lehnert, K A
EM: lehnert@ldeo.columbia.edu
AF: Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, 61 Route 9W, Palisades, NY 10964 United States
AB: In common with most other research institutions in the Geosciences, Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University (LDEO) strives constantly to build and maintain strength on its staff through the recruitment and retention at a number of different levels of the highest quality researchers and educators. An essential characteristic of these activities is a special emphasis upon achieving gender balance in the scientific staff of the Observatory. Our goal is the establishment and maintenance of a number of women researchers appropriate to their representation in the graduate student body of the Earth and Environmental Sciences. Though we fail at achieving the 50 per cent representation that should be our goal, significant progress has been made as, over the last year, the Observatory's Senior Scientific staff has doubled the number of its female members through both recruitment and retention efforts. We present analyses of the recent history of recruitment and retention of women researchers at Lamont. Lamont has instituted a number of institutional policies and practices targeted at improving the institutional climate such as the development of onsite daycare, support of a maternity leave for research faculty, the instigation of a stop-the-clock policy for promotion procedures and the definition of clear, written well-communicated procedures for career advancement. In addition to the establishment of formal policies emphasis is placed on attacking issues at the level of the individual. A case is made that the complex variability of background and circumstance requires responses tailored to specific situations and individuals, and that a primary approach to stopping the loss of women researchers from professional careers in the Geosciences is a flexible approach enabling proactive responses to be designed on a case-by-case basis.
DE: 6605 Education
DE: 6620 Science policy
DE: 6630 Workforce
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting