ADVANCE Leadership Award

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This award provides support for reconfiguration and revitalization of a project called Womenin Linguistics Mentoring Alliance (WILMA). WILMA was started in 1996 to provide women inlinguistics with mentors to help them acquire general survival skills and guide them through theearly stages of their careers, thus increasing the numbers of women in linguistics. WILMA grewout of discussions among members of COSWL (the Committee on the Status of Women inLinguistics) and others which indicated a need for consistent mentoring practices for women inlinguistics. In this project a new program which makes use of the internet for identifying and arranging mentorships will be initiated. The goal is to create a self-sustaining website where women in linguistics can go to search for mentors who share their interests and attributes.Effective mentoring is critically important for academic advancement and personaldevelopment in any field of study. WILMA is based on a model thatsupplements rather than replaces other mentoring, on the premise that students and facultybenefit from exposure to a range of points of view and alternative responses to practicalquestions. There is also additional benefit to developing contacts beyond the home departmentand campus. Thus, the kind of mentoring provided through WILMA can be useful even towomen lucky enough to have good mentors and advisors at their home institutions.This project is supported by the NSF ADVANCE Program. The overall mission of the ADVANCE Program is to increase the participation of women in the scientific and engineering workforce through the increased representation and advancement of women in academic science and engineering careers.