Thank god.
I received this email this morning. While I am very sad to be absent from these meetings, I can't wait to participate in the conversation some way via email or skype, and hear the results of these discussions.
Dear all,
The faculty are going to be discussing the gender disparity in the department. With our latest hire, the faculty is 6 women, 17 men, with all the women teaching modern subfields. Among the graduate students, it's 11 women, 35 men. Although you can't judge diversity strictly in numbers, that level of disparity is indicative of an issue, especially since it doesn't match the university as a whole (faculty is 41% female, graduate students 57%). We also have relatively few scholars working on gender topics relative to our peer institutions.
Drs. Burke and Glover have a number of ideas about how to start addressing this disparity. They've suggested holding a sort of workshop for grad students to come and express their ideas. It would be chaired by a faculty member from Wash U, and your comments would be anonymous, so you could express yourself without worrying about being judged. You would also be able to contact the faculty member on your own.
The department also wants to do something for women's history month, which is March. This year's event will be probably be small, since it's on very short notice, but they'd like it to become a more regular thing.
If any of this sounds like something you'd like to get involved with, please let me know. I'm going to be meeting with Dr. Burke at some point this week, and it will be a topic again at the next faculty meeting.
Thank you,
Jason
Dear all,
The faculty are going to be discussing the gender disparity in the department. With our latest hire, the faculty is 6 women, 17 men, with all the women teaching modern subfields. Among the graduate students, it's 11 women, 35 men. Although you can't judge diversity strictly in numbers, that level of disparity is indicative of an issue, especially since it doesn't match the university as a whole (faculty is 41% female, graduate students 57%). We also have relatively few scholars working on gender topics relative to our peer institutions.
Drs. Burke and Glover have a number of ideas about how to start addressing this disparity. They've suggested holding a sort of workshop for grad students to come and express their ideas. It would be chaired by a faculty member from Wash U, and your comments would be anonymous, so you could express yourself without worrying about being judged. You would also be able to contact the faculty member on your own.
The department also wants to do something for women's history month, which is March. This year's event will be probably be small, since it's on very short notice, but they'd like it to become a more regular thing.
If any of this sounds like something you'd like to get involved with, please let me know. I'm going to be meeting with Dr. Burke at some point this week, and it will be a topic again at the next faculty meeting.
Thank you,
Jason