Are Women Achieving Equity in Chemistry? - American Chemical

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Chapter 6

The Clare Boothe Luce Program for Women in the Sciences and Engineering Jane Zimmer Daniels th

The Henry Luce Foundation, 111 West 50 Street, Suite 4601, New York, NY 10020

The Clare Boothe Luce Program for Women in the Sciences and Engineering is the largest private source of support for women in the sciences and engineering, with grants totaling over $100 million to support 1430 scholarships, fellowships and professorships since its inception in 1989. A group of the professorship recipients participated in a study comparing their responses with those of NSF-ftinded POWRE awardees. The experiences of these pre-tenure female faculty members across a broad spectrum of academic settings suggest institutional policies or practices which would increase the satisfaction, retention, and success of female faculty members in fields where they are least well-represented. The understandings provided by this research on women have significant potential to enhance the career development, work environment and retention of men as well.

© 2006 American Chemical Society Marzabadi et al.; Are Women Achieving Equity in Chemistry? ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2006.

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The Clare Boothe Luce Program The Clare Boothe Luce (CBL) Program strives to increase the participation of women in the sciences (including mathematics) and engineering at every level of higher education and to serve as a catalyst for colleges and universities to be proactive in their own efforts toward this goal. The CBL Program is the single largest private source of funding for women in science and engineering. Since its inception grants totaling over $100 million have been made to 137 different institutions supporting 1430 women with scholarships, graduate fellowships or professorships. Figure 1 shows the total number of recipients supported and the total expenditures for each grant category.

Figure 1. Clare Boothe Luce Program Grants 1989-2004

Clare Boothe Luce (1903-1987) was a remarkable woman whose career spanned seven decades and nearly as many professional interests, such as journalism, politics, the theatre, diplomacy, and military intelligence. In each of those fields she excelled. Not content with her achievements, Mrs. Luce was always eager to consider new topics, to test new hypotheses, and to encourage other women to achieve their own potential. Characteristically, she declined to restrict her vision to the fields in which she had established her reputation. Under the terms of her will, she chose instead to establish a legacy that would benefit current and future generations of women with talent and ambition in areas where they continue to be severely underrepresented—the sciences and engineering. In establishing the Program, Mrs. Luce designated as its administrator, The Henry Luce Foundation, established in 1936 by her husband, Henry R. Luce, cofounder and editor in chief of Time, Inc. Grants are made in one of three

Marzabadi et al.; Are Women Achieving Equity in Chemistry? ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2006.

65 categories: 1) undergraduate scholarships, 2) graduate fellowships, and 3) term support for beginning tenure-track appointments. As stated in her will the program is intended "to encourage women to enter, study, graduate, and teach" in fields where there have seemingly been obstacles to their advancement. A l l physical and life sciences, mathematics, computer science and all areas of engineering are included. Medical sciences are excluded.


Clare Boothe Luce Professorships Grants for Clare Boothe Luce (CBL) Professorships are made to colleges or universities for a new tenure-track faculty position. Once the grant is received, the institution has a year to search for an appropriate female candidate for the CBL Professorship. The grant covers the recipient's salary, benefits and a career development fund for a period of five years. The institution must show evidence of their ability to support the position after the grant period. The intent of the professorship is to identify female scientists and engineers of the highest caliber and to guarantee early in their academic career, opportunities commensurate with their considerable talents. The candidate must be external to the institution's existing faculty, typically in her first tenure-track position. Any candidate for the professorship must be either a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. The recipient is identified as a Clare Boothe Luce Assistant (Associate) Professor. Figure 2 shows the breadth of disciplines represented by the CBL Professorship recipients.

Figure 2. Clare Boothe Luce Professors by Discipline (1989-2004)

A successful proposal typically describes how the institution plans to increase the recipient's external visibility and nurture her professional



66 development (e.g. mentoring by senior faculty members, resources for research, additional travel funds, relief from administrative duties). The proposal also indicates the administration understands the factors that may hinder a woman's career advancement and describes how the institution provides support for all female faculty members in the sciences and engineering to ensure their success. Quantifiable evidence of such support (e.g. comparable tenure and promotion rates for female and male faculty members, prior successful assimilation of female faculty members into a nationally recognized research program, existing career development programs for faculty) is requested. An identifying characteristic of the CBL Professorship grant is a special career development fund (typically 20% of salary). The unusual feature of this fund is its great flexibility. Not only may it be used for typical research expenses, such as equipment and graduate assistants, but for release time, travel, and child-care. The recipient of the professorship acts as the principal investigator for this allocation and is mentored by an experienced faculty member to help the CBL Professor leverage these funds in the most effective ways. This allocation is in addition to normal start-up funds provided by the institution. The institution must provide the facilities and resources required by the recipient of a value equal to or greater than those provided to comparable faculty members.

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Policy Implications of CBL Professors Experiences The research described by Rosser in Chapter 6 of this volume (1, 2, 3) compared the responses of POWRE awardees (most at research institutions) with those of CBL Professorship recipients (many at small liberal arts colleges and faith-based institutions). POWRE awardees are women who received peerreviewed funding from a focused National Science Foundation program in fiscal years 1997-2000. They are primarily untenured assistant professors in tenuretrack positions at research universities. The POWRE awards were capped at $75,000, with a typical duration of 12-18 months. The experiences of the POWRE and CBL pre-tenure female faculty members across a broad spectrum of academic settings points toward institutional policies or practices which could increase the satisfaction, retention, and success of female faculty members in fields where they are least wellrepresented. Such positive changes have a potential ripple effect on female graduate and undergraduate students as they consider the wisdom of choosing a career in academia. The issue of balance—whether pertaining to the tension between personal responsibilities and the demands of work or among competing demands within the work environment—surfaces time and again as an impediment to the



67 attraction and advancement of women in the sciences and engineering. The combined responses of POWRE awardees and CBL Professorship recipients leave no doubt that the issue of balancing work with personal responsibilities is the most pervasive and persistent challenge facing female science and engineering faculty members—irrespective of the type of institution or discipline. The conflicting demands of work and personal responsibilities are likely exacerbated for female science and engineering faculty members because of the competitiveness and inflexibility characteristic of these fields. Engineering in particular, with its origins in the military (4\ 5), unnecessarily perpetuates its hierarchical nature and cutthroat competitiveness. Many female faculty members, if they have postponed childbearing until after graduate school and post-doctoral experiences, face a common dilemma— how to resolve the competition between the biological clock and tenure clock. An additional challenge makes this situation more problematic for female faculty members in the sciences and engineering since most of them (62%) are married to a scientist or engineer who has similar, unreasonable demands on his time (6). Although most of their male colleagues are also married, few are married to a scientist or engineer.

Increasing Flexibility and Distributing Control Creative institutional solutions to faculty members' pressures to balance work and personal demands appear promising. Such solutions cluster around two issues—increased flexibility for individual faculty members and the distribution of control from the institution or administration to the individual. Flexibility evident in work hours, benefits, and telecommuting and distribution of control to the individual through a cafeteria system of benefits or in a start-up package that includes a professional development account available until tenure (hallmark of the CBL Professorships) are examples of such institutional solutions. Several institutions have developed a cafeteria of benefits that provides important flexibility across the span of a faculty member's career. Child care or elder care benefits may take the form of financial assistance, information and assessment of available services, or the convenience of on-site facilities. An example of this type of flexibility exists at Iowa State University where on-site child care for infants through kindergartners has a sliding scale of fees; a cafeteria of benefits allows any benefit dollars that remain after selection to be moved to a flexible spending account for medical expenses or child care expenses, departmental assistance for spousal hires, and lactation rooms for nursing women.


68 Institutional policies that address the issue of balance would likely have a positive impact on the recruitment and retention of female undergraduate and graduate students, as well. The perception that success in the sciences and engineering requires an intense, unbalanced focus on inanimate objects for prolonged periods of time is a significant deterrent to women selecting those fields for a life-long career (7).


Broadening Access to Success The small number of women in most areas of the sciences and engineering can impede, or worse yet, end, the career of an outstanding female scientist or engineer. A lack of role models, feelings of isolation, and stereotyping are all obstacles caused by low numbers. In recent years interventions at the precollege, undergraduate and graduate levels have resulted in small increases in enrollment and graduation rates of females. A number of institutions are now broadening their scope to include faculty programs intended to offset the consequences of the small proportions of women in their ranks. Examples of such faculty programs include mentoring of new faculty members by senior faculty members; networking events for female faculty members to diminish feelings of isolation; and structuring of departmental/college symposia to ensure the inclusion of distinguished female speakers. The initial steps of widening paths to success in academia require an understanding of gender differences specific to an individual institution or department. Do paths narrow in certain places (departments), at critical junctures (recruitment, tenure, promotion to full professor, prestigious awards, or influential committees) or over specific issues (salary, space, or graduate student assignment)? A study of faculty members hired as assistant professors or instructors at the University of Michigan between 1982 and 1988 revealed that 53% of male assistant professors and 24% of male instructors but only 43% of the female assistant professors and 10% of the female instructors received tenure (

Are Women Achieving Equity in Chemistry? - American Chemical

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