OPN Column September 2014
Multi-Tiered Role Models in Career Workshops, Anna Garry and Ursula KellerCareer workshops using multi-tiered role models can support and advance minority scientists at all career stages.
Women and minority scientists remain a rarity in the scientific workplace. A female physicist may still be the only woman researcher or project manager in an optics company, or she may be a Ph.D. student in a physics department with only one or two female professors. In this sense, minority scientists (unlike those from the majority culture) gain no everyday experience of observing, interacting and learning from colleagues as they take each career step to leadership. There is no innate path for them to envisage their own future in a scientific career.
Here, we present our experience of designing career workshops for female scientists in physics and chemistry. We evolved the workshop design to a format in which we invite presenters, or role models, from different stages in a scientific career—for example,
early, mid-career and leadership level in academia or industry. An organized discussion after the presentations enables direct interaction between presenters and participants. Full article can be downloaded below....
AnnaGarryUKellerOPNSep2014