On the list of sundry questions about how to meet her goal of becoming a thriving, tenured academic, Dr. Minoli Perera wanted to know just how to set up a scientific laboratory, manage it and balance those tasks against a bevy of other obligations, both professional and personal: teaching, advising students on college courses and post-college careers, doing her self-directed research and publishing the results — all while meeting the needs of her spouse and their two offspring, now preschoolers.
When she enlisted the University of Chicago and Northwestern University’s joint project to increase the tally of female professors tenured in the science, technology, engineering and math fields — ensuring equality in the workloads they shoulder and their chances to stand in an ivory tower spotlight long occupied by their male colleagues — Perera was hopeful.
But she wasn’t entirely sure of what to expect from the series of workshops.
“I signed up partly out of a curiosity to see what I could learn — as a kind of networking opportunity — from others who were senior to me,” said the 30-something University of Chicago assistant professor of medicine. “The other part of it is that while we have a lot of instructional mentoring on the science, career advice is given, but I needed it to be more available.”
While women have been increasingly finding their place as STEM professionals, that has been an unsteady trend. Some have enrolled in Ph.D. programs but dropped out. Others, meanwhile, are left to ask: After gaining tenure, what to do next? How does one thrive as a tenured professor with the same ease, efficiency and longevity of career as their male counterparts?
“Particularly at institutions like Northwestern and the University of Chicago, we’re likely hiring folks because they’re potential stars in their research, in their own discipline,” said Dr. Katherine Faber, a materials science and engineering professor at Northwestern. “Women candidates often have learned to conduct research very well in their grad programs, but they often have not learned some of the subtleties that are necessary to achieving tenure. That may be something as simple — or complicated — as how to run a laboratory or mentor a student in the same way that you were mentored. How do you find a mentor for your own career? These are not the things we teach in graduate school.”
Keeping Careers on Track
