Educational Leadership of Women & People of Color

For the world to cope with its full range of problems, women must be agents of change. Unfortunately, historically and globally, women’s voices have been largely missing from positions of power and influence.

 

To address this issue, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton launched a bold new initiative  late last year to increase the number of women in public service at the local, national, and international level. Developed by a founding partnership of the five leading women’s colleges—Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Smith, and Wellesley—and the U.S. Department of State, the Women in Public Service Project (WPSP) will “provide vital momentum to the next generation of women leaders.” The project’s ambitious goal is global political and civil leadership of at least 50 percent women by 2050. On the way, the project plans to build “the infrastructure and conven[e] the conversations necessary to achieve this vision.”

 

WPSP will offer an annual summer institute in partnership with the women’s colleges, the first to be held this year at Clinton’s alma mater Wellesley. Emerging leaders from all over the globe will gain critical skills in public speaking, coalition building, networking, and mentorship, with State Department sponsorship for 40 participants from Middle Eastern and North African countries in political transition.

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Law schools with a high percentage of full-time women and minority faculty members on average had a larger percentage of female students on their flagship law reviews during the last academic year, according to New York Law School Law Review's 2010-11 Law Review Diversity Report. 

"We know that law review membership has strong implications for postgraduation success in the legal field, and wanted to determine whether the composition of a school's faculty would have any impact on the success of female and minority students on law review," said Jamie Sinclair, a 3L at New York Law School who worked on the study with classmates Dana Brodsky, Maria Cheung, Kelly Garner, Jamie Sinclair and publisher Marcey Grigsby. 

The study followed a 2010 report by Ms. JD, a nonprofit organization that seeks to advance women in the legal profession. The Ms. JD report looked at the law review membership and leadership at the top 50 law schools, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report. It found that on average, women accounted for 44 percent of law review membership at those top schools. 

The New York Law School Law Review survey focused on law review membership at the 20 law schools with the highest percentages of full-time female faculty, and the 20 schools with the highest percentages of full-time minority faculty. Each of those schools fell outside U.S. News' top 50. 

At schools with larger percentages of female faculty members, 52 percent of law review members were women. The figure was nearly 59 percent at the schools with high percentages of minority faculty. Whereas Ms. JD found that a mere 33 percent of law reviews at the top 50 law schools had a female editor in chief, that figure was 60 percent at the schools with many female faculty members and 46 percent at schools with high percentages of minority faculty. 

"Getting into law school is only half the battle — for better or for worse, grades matter a lot, and law review membership is one of the most prominent indicators of academic achievement," said Brodsky. "Our survey shows a possible connection between the overall environment a school provides and the achievement of its women and minority students." 

The study also indicated that law schools outside the top 50 provide women with a greater opportunity to obtain law review membership and serve in a leadership role, she said. 

Contact Karen Sloan at ksloan@alm.com.

But a new study of female engineering students' perceived challenges finds significant differences between black, Hispanic, Native American, Asian-American and white women. The findings by researchers at University of Washington could help institutions better retain particular underrepresented groups of students.

 

"What we're finding is these women's experiences are different, which is why grouping all women together doesn't make sense," said co-author Elizabeth Litzler, research director at the UW's Center for Workforce Development. She recently presented the findings in Vancouver, B.C., at the annual meeting of the American Society for Engineering Education.

 

The study used data collected in 2008 by the Project to Assess Climate in Engineering survey, conducted by UW researchers and funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Investigators distributed questionnaires and interviews to undergraduate engineering students at 21 U.S. colleges and universities that were interested in supporting diversity programs. The study received more than 10,500 responses, with higher than average numbers of women and minority students.

 

"The study's size gave us a really great opportunity to talk about race, which is usually not possible in engineering," Litzler said.

The UW researchers looked at the aggregate findings to seek overall trends among the responses. Students were asked about such subjects as teaching, labs, student interactions, personal experiences and their perceptions of their major.

"We see important trends in our findings," Litzler said. "For example, Hispanics reported feeling like they were taken less seriously than other students. African-Americans, not at all."

 

However, black women reported higher instances of feeling singled out in the classroom because of their race than Hispanic, Native American and Asian-American women.

 

Another significant finding related to female students' comfort approaching their professors. Many female students said they were uncomfortable approaching professors with questions, but black women were significantly less likely to report this as an issue.

 

Native American women were the least likely to approach their professors individually.

 

"These findings advance our understanding of race and experience of undergraduate engineering education," Litzler said. "I don't think this suggest huge differences. But having a better understanding of where students may be coming from may be able to help us direct them, and give them suggestions that may lead to them staying in engineering."

 

The trends come from analyzing numerical scores on the questionnaires. Next the researchers will analyze the students' interview responses to better understand the reasons behind these trends.

 

The UW investigators also will continue with the larger PACE study. Researchers gave each school a summary of its students' responses as well as recommendations for interventions that would improve the students' experiences, such as instituting diversity training for teaching assistants, or providing more mentoring opportunities for freshmen women. More than half the schools have since implemented at least three of the suggested interventions.

 

"You can't just attack retention by developing a bunch of interventions. Institutions need a strategic plan," said co-author Suzanne Brainard, UW affiliate professor of gender, women and sexuality studies and of human centered design and engineering and executive director of the UW's Center for Workforce Development.

 

A new grant from the Sloan Foundation will allow the center to follow up with the schools. Starting in September, UW researchers will go back and collect data to see whether the targeted interventions succeeded in retaining more women and minorities. Brainard said she is confident the data will show that retention rates have improved.

 

Students at the UW were not included in the study because it looked only at one-tier schools, where students enroll in an undergraduate engineering program directly from high school. However, the UW and other schools where not all engineering students are admitted in the freshman year could still benefit from the findings, the authors said.