| Workshop: Trekking the Tenure Track |
| According to a recent survey conducted by the National Science Foundation, women holding doctorates are less likely to be full professors than their male counterparts. Interestingly, women and men enter the tenure track in comparable number, but as their careers progress, the differences in rank widens. This workshop highlights the experiences of three academic women at different stages of the tenure process. The goals of this workshop are to discuss the reasons for pursuing tenure, the challenges of obtaining tenure, and the responsibilities of tenure. |
| Panelists |
| Erica Ollmann Saphire |
| Kim Barrett |
| Susan Forsburg |
| Erica
Ollmann Saphire is an Assistant Professor in the Department of
Immunology at The Scripps Research Institute. Her lab combines x-ray crystallography,
virology, and immunology to study viral hemorrhagic fevers with a special
emphasis on understanding and defeating the Ebola virus. Erica got her
bachelor’s degree from Rice University in Houston with dual majors
in Biochemistry and Ecology/Evolutionary Biology. She did her dissertation
with Ian A. Wilson in the Dept. of Molecular Biology and a postdoc with
Dennis Burton at TSRI on structure-based vaccine design for HIV-1 and
was shortly thereafter recruited to join the TSRI faculty. She is the
recipient of a Burroughs Wellcome Career Award in the Biomedical Sciences,
a New Initiatives Award in Global Infectious Disease form the Ellison
Medical Foundation, is a member of the Pediatric Dengue Vaccine Initiative,
and is the recipient of the Sidhu Award of the Pittsburgh Diffraction
Society for the most outstanding contribution to the field of diffraction
by a person within five years of the Ph.D. |
Dr.
Kim Barrett is a native of the United Kingdom, and received her
Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry from University College London. Following
post-doctoral training at the National Institutes of Health, she became
a member of the faculty at UCSD School of Medicine in 1985, where she
has risen steadily through the ranks to assume her present position of
Professor of Medicine in 1996. Initially appointed to the research faculty,
and subsequently to a non-tenure track professorial series, she was transferred
to the tenured series upon her promotion to Full Professor. Dr. Barrett
conducts an internationally recognized research program that focuses on
the physiology and pathophysiology of the intestinal epithelium. She is
also an accomplished teacher of both medical and graduate students, and
has also trained multiple postdoctoral fellows and junior faculty. She
has had a long-standing interest in academic career development and the
status of women in academia, and recently co-chaired the Health Sciences
Gender Equity Task Force at UCSD. She has received several honors both
for her research contributions as well as her contributions to mentoring,
and in 2004, received the degree of Doctor of Medical Sciences, honoris
causa, from Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland. |
Susan
Forsburg received her BA in English and Molecular Biology at
UC Berkeley, followed by her Ph.D. in Biology at MIT. She was a postdoctoral
fellow at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund at Oxford University. In 1993,
she joined the faculty at the Salk Institute in La Jolla CA and became
an adjunct faculty member in the Dept of Biology at UCSD. In 2004, Forsburg
moved to the University of Southern California as part of USC’s
Senior Faculty Hiring initiative and the expansion of the life sciences
program in the College of Letters Arts and Sciences. She is also a member
of the Norris/USC Comprehensive Cancer Center. |