Graduate students Katie Mussack, left, and Amy Cassidy co-organized a conference for undergraduate women in physics.
Photo credit: Phil Channing
|
Patching a Leaky Pipeline
Student-organized conference encourages women to pursue careers in physics
By Eva Emerson
The academic pipeline that produces career physicists is especially
leaky for women: Although women make up about 30 percent of
undergraduate physics majors at USC College, they represent less than
15 percent of doctoral students in the department. At the faculty
level, the paucity of women is even more noticeable.
And USC is by no means unusual, said physicist Stephan Haas. “Women are
completely under-represented in the field. It’s a serious concern.”
Doctoral students Katie Mussack and Amy Cassidy wanted to patch some of
those leaks. That led them to organize the inaugural Conference for
Undergraduate Women in Physics at USC, a weekend meeting that brought
29 undergraduates representing 12 institutions, including five from
USC, to campus last January.
USC’s Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) program, the Graduate and
Professional Student Senate, the College and the physics department
co-sponsored the event.
“Every time we talked to someone about [the idea], they were
enthusiastic. It was a need the university recognized. It just took
someone stepping up and saying ‘We’ll do it!’ ” said Mussack.
Mussack and Cassidy know first-hand the issues facing young women
contemplating a higher degree or career in the male-dominated field.
“Our own feeling is that neither of us were pushed or encouraged to
think about graduate school while we were undergraduates,” said
Cassidy, who studies condensed matter with Haas. “We wondered, ‘How
many women undergraduates in physics are?’ ”
“I wished I’d known anything about being a graduate student when I
first applied,” said Mussack, who studies solar physics with Professor
Werner Däppen. “We wanted to help keep more women in physics by helping
them through the transition to graduate school. It’s critical to see
there are other women doing physics, to know you are not alone.”
The meeting included networking sessions and presentations on active
areas of physics research, challenges and resources for women in
science, careers outside of academe, the nuts and bolts of applying to
graduate school and what to expect once you get there.
Before attending the conference, Elizabeth Tanis, a senior at
California Lutheran University, had decided not to pursue a Ph.D. “My
original plan was to go straight into the workforce,” Tanis said. “The
conference boosted my self-confidence. It really motivated me to want
to go to grad school.” She has since applied to the University of
Nevada, Las Vegas, which had a late deadline. If she’s not accepted,
she said, she’ll apply to more schools for 2007.
“Amy and Katie put this together all on their own initiative,” noted
Haas. “Other schools talk about this push for diversity, but, thanks to
these two outstanding students, we’re actually doing something.”
|
|
|
