Gender, Faculty, and Doctoral Education in Science and Engineering

Abstract

Initiatives to increase the numbers of women faculty derive in part from understandings that the representation of women faculty is crucial for the culture and climate of the university and for the development of students’ capacities and potential. Faculty are consequential for students through what they convey, demonstrate, and exemplify. This is true throughout educational stages. But it is the case particularly for doctoral education. For graduate students, the impact of faculty is broad and deep—affecting the way students acquire knowledge, values, norms, skills, and beliefs (Zuckerman 1977). Graduate students report that faculty are the single most important aspect of their education (Clark and Corcoran 1986; Katz and Hartnett 1976). That influence, however, may be for better or worse, positive and/or negative (as is the case for undergraduate education; see Astin and Sax 1996). For those students who enter academic careers, the effects of their graduate school faculty are often so strong as to provide perspectives and orientations that guide their lifetimes of teaching and research (Trow 1977:15).

The research reported here was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (SED-9153994).