INSTITUTION: PAESMEM Nomination of the Penn State Women in Engineering

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Pangborn AbstractPAESMEM Mentoring for Academic Career Development Study and Action WorkshopABSTRACTThe power of mentoring and role models is generally acknowledged and are criticalcareer development tools for women in engineering faculty careers. Yet, because women areseverely underrepresented on engineering faculties nationwide, many junior and mid-levelengineering faculty women lack positive female role models and mentors and are too oftenoverlooked or left out of crucial information loops. The successful senior women who are thepotential mentors have little time or experience of successful mentoring. What is needed is amentoring model, or methodology, that provides the necessary support for junior and mid-levelwomen faculty, mines the experience of senior women faculty, and respects the time demandsthat are a reality for all productive engineering faculty members. It is necessary to design ways inwhich successful mentors can have sustained contact with junior faculty while not overburdeningthe mentors themselves.The proposed Mentoring for Academic Career Development Study and Action Workshop,led by Penn State's Council of Senior Engineering Faculty Women will bring together seniorwomen from universities and industry to identify effective practices in faculty mentoring as well asproblems in developing good mentoring programs. The goal will be to develop a realistic modeland guidelines for mentoring junior and mid-level faculty women. Inclusion of successful industrywomen will allow the workshop to include industry practices and experiences in the deliberation.Workshop objectives are to:o Create a realistic model, based upon experience, practice and on-going research, of howmentoring can be provided in a comprehensive way to junior faculty women.o Build on existing Penn State workshops for career development for faculty womeno Improve the mentoring experiences of all participantso Identify a set of research questions for future investigation into mentoring for engineeringfaculty womeno Publish and broadly disseminate workshop outcomesThe workshop will include pre-assessment surveys, pre-work and readings on current literature,and pre- and post-conference interactions-all designed to set up a productive dialogue. Postconferenceassessment will also be conducted.Intellectual MeritThe PAESMEM Mentoring Study and Action Workshop aims to broaden current understanding ofthe challenges of mentoring in the Academy to benefit three important audiences - junior andmid-level faculty women, senior faculty women and administrators. The proposed workshop willresult in published guidelines in paper and electronic format. The workshop assessment willprovide basic information for researchers in academic mentoring. In the long term, this workshopwill create a new dialogue about effective mentoring that can be implemented in the highpressure world of engineering faculties. It is anticipated that the findings will be relevant to otherSTEM professionals.Broader ImpactThe findings of the workshop have the potential to provide engineering faculty with the tools fordeveloping an effective mentoring model for engineering faculty women, a groupunderrepresented in engineering.