University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Chancellor's Committee on the Status of Women

Meeting Minutes

12:00-1:00 p.m., 500 Swanlund Administration Building

I. Announcements

A. Welcome to all members.

II. Old Business

A. Approval of minutes of the February 28, 2006 meeting.

III. Other Items

A. Dale Bauer inquired about the gender equity and pay studies.

B. Carol Livingstone informed that her office had not started working on it but it was the next
    thing on her list and it will be done before salary raise around May-June 2006.

C. Ginger Winckler inquired about the overarching goal of the special talks that we have during
    our committee meetings.

D. Cheryl Bullock informed that her goal as the Chair was to bring knowledge and information
    from across the campus to this committee. She referred to President White's Strategic Plan and
    one of the areas of the plan was to consider promotion, tenure, and mentoring issues. Her plan
    was to prepare a concise report taking all the information we have collected over these meetings
    and present a timeframe at the last meeting in May. The report will be sent to all the members
    by the end of May 2006 and then after everyone has had a chance to read it, as a group we will
    give recommendations by July 2006.

IV. New Business

A. College of Engineering-Mentoring Program: Cheryl Bullock introduced the guests from the
    Office of Special Programs, College of Engineering, Susan Linnemeyer, the Director of the
    Officeof Special Programs and Tabassum Haque, teaching assistant for Engineering 199W, the
    mentoring course for freshman engineering students.

1. Susan Linnemeyer provided an overview of the course and informed the committee
    that the course had been started eight years ago and the very first year it was
    conducted as a program. The main purpose of the course was to support women in
    engineering and open them up to sciences. Women tended to drop out of engineering
    more often and these women have higher GPA's, but they tend to internalize their
    problems.

2. Susan Linnemeyer informed that mentoring had been shown by numerous studies
    as something that benefits women. A couple of years ago, the Goodman's report
    highlighted that mentoring prepared women in engineering in the top universities for
    administrative positions. When she started the engineering program in 1997,
    mentoring was an integral part of it. The program has undergone many changes in
    its format. It started as a year long course but it was difficult to get students to
    commit for such a long time. Presently it was being offered only in the fall semester.
    She informed that it was a one-hour course and the students meet every two
    weeks formally. The weeks that they do not meet formally, the mentor and mentee
    meet informally.

3. Susan Linnemeyer referred to the handout of the course and explained the
    schedule of the course. The first activity was a resume workshop in coordination
    with the Career Center followed by the Engineering Expo. The formal talks began
    last fall with a lecture by Bruce Litchfield and Angela Dimit. It was attempted to
    give the students exposure towards teamwork, relations in general engineering and
    leadership skills. They also try to bring at least one nationally renowned speaker
    and this year it was Carol Muller, founder and CEO of MentorNet.

4. Susan Linnemeyer informed that usually they had at least two corporate sponsors
    for their program, and this year they had Boeing and Lockheed. Corporate
    interviewing skills and etiquette dinners were an important part of the program.
    Allison Walter conducted the business etiquette dinner and these were very
    successful. The weeks, during which informal meetings were scheduled, a list of
    activities was provided to the pair. They advertised the program during summer
    when the freshmen students came in for registration. They match freshmen students
    in the same department with an upper-class student in the same department. The
    upper-class women were mentored by graduate students and the graduate students
    were mentored by the faculty. Thus, the students were mentored at all levels.

5. Tabassum Haque apprised the committee that they tried their best to involve
    undergraduate students to share their experiences and graduate students to give
    tips on job hunting and other such topics.

6. Susan Linnemeyer informed that this course served as a platform for students
    to meet professors and each year the theme was changed to cover different topics.
    She narrated an example of a freshman who was enrolled in the program and
    came back in her sophomore year to serve as a mentor.

7. Tabassum Haque informed the committee that they carried out an evaluation to
    find out from the students about their likes and dislikes, the speakers that they
    enjoyed the most listening to or topics that they liked to be included.

8. Susan Linnemeyer apprised that at the end of each formal meeting, they
    organized a light lunch and that was one of the reasons that corporate sponsors
    were needed. In addition, evaluations conducted over the years found that
    women were more likely to come up with queries and feedback in an informal
    setting.

9. Tabassum Haque informed the committee about the journal that the students
    were required to fill during the semester. They were allowed to choose 7
    informal activities from a list of 14. It provided an opportunity for the pair to go
    out for dinner or lunch to discuss their courses or academic progress, etc.
    Thereafter the pair had to answer some questions in the journal, which
    was reviewed twice during the semester to assess the relationship and assign
    grades.

10. Susan Linnemeyer informed the committee that during the last eight years,
      they have faced problems just two or three times when the pairs were unable
      to strike a relationship. Another requirement of the course was to have an
      electronic mentoring relationship.

11. Tabassum Haque highlighted some other requirements of the course.
      Attendance was mandatory since they met only eight times in a semester.
      There was also a reading assignment and had to fill out the journal. Two
      textbooks were assigned which contained fun ideas to develop the relationship
      between the mentor and the mentee. Electronic communication was an
      important part that was monitored by herself to oversee the progress of the
      relationships.

12. Joyce Wright inquired about the percentage of female undergraduate students
      in engineering.

13. Susan Linnemeyer informed that the percentage had dropped down from 19
      to 15 percent.

14. Tabassum Haque informed that the dropouts were concentrated in Computer
      Science and Electrical C Engineering departments.

15. Ginger Winckler inquired about the availability of recent statistics on the matter.

16. Susan Linnemeyer informed that each year they conducted annual evaluations
      focusing on mentor-mentee relationships, equity change, etc.

17. Tabassum Haque informed that during one study they took the data from
      1999-2003 of students that had taken the course and focused on characteristics
      like GPA, ethnic backgrounds, etc. They then matched these characteristics
      with people who had not taken the mentoring course and assessed their
      progress. The odds were three times to those who did not take the class to
      stay in engineering.

18. Susan Linnemeyer informed that this program had also helped to retain
      people in engineering and she was able to recruit a number of women to
      engineering programs.

19. Tabassum Haque emphasized that this course also helped mentors as well as
      mentees. Mentors increasingly felt that serving as mentors reinforced their
      belief in engineering.

20. Cheryl Bullock raised her concerns that since this course was an elective,
      what steps were taken to advertise it.

21. Susan Linnemeyer informed that the main target were freshmen students.
      They usually have more mentors than mentees. She was currently discussing
      strategies with the Associate Dean to make the course more widespread the
      make it an alternative to Engineering 100.

22. Cheryl Bullock inquired about the content of the course Engineering.

23. Susan Linnemeyer informed that Engineering 100 involved sharing of
      information about the different departments and courses. She had remodeled
      this course, combined it with some of WIMSE (Women in Math, Science
      and Engineering) activities, and never forced women to join only women
      oriented courses. The format of this course can be easily duplicated but there
      are certain costs involved for the TA and the business etiquette. Thus, it is
      about $4000 for 50 students.

24. Susan Linnemeyer apprised the committee about the MentorNet program,
      an electronic mentoring program across the country. The pairs are matched
      on a one-on-one basis and one can choose the type of characteristics one
      needs in her mentor. The university has offered this since 1998 and it was one
      of the most heavily used programs. She pointed out the list of departments that
      can be served by the program and some informal comments about it in the
      handout.

25. Tabassum Haque informed about the profile matching system of MentorNet
      and told the committee that the mentees had the option of changing their
      mentors also if they were not satisfied. From their experiences, most of the
      people enjoy their relationships and very few report in the negative for it.

26. Susan Linnemeyer cited an example of a student who secured an internship
      through her electronic mentor and also stayed at her mentor's place. She also
      informed that people had this misconception that this program was only for
      engineering. She used to send out emails regarding MentorNet earlier but
      after facing certain objections, she stopped doing so.

27. Kathleen Pecknold inquired if they provided the students with statistics and
      quotes about the program to advertise it.

28. Susan Linnemeyer informed that they do and recently they finished an
      evaluation study and would incorporate the results also.

29. Dale Bauer inquired about the kind of support they receive from academic
      advisors.

30. Susan Linnemeyer informed that they involve academic advisors during
      summer when registration is on and she emailed the chief academic advisors
      of all departments about this program. However, it was not always possible
      to reach out to all the departments on campus.

31. Kathleen Pecknold inquired if it would be helpful to have the Dean inform
      the department heads about this program.

32. Susan Linnemeyer agreed that it would help to reach out to the departments
      and academic advisors also to advertise this program and encourage students.

33. Pat Morey inquired if the involvement of parents would also play a positive
      role in advertising this program with the orientation information that went out
      to them. The moms and dads association could play a key role during summer
      orientation sessions to target freshmen students joining in fall.

34. Susan Linnemeyer informed that they sent out a letter during summer and
      recently when they contacted minority students, their parents were completely
      unaware of their children's programs. Thus, they have decided to send
      letters to parents as well. Some of the students had also signed up for the
      course without their parents recommending it to them and they had to inform
      them that this was not a regular engineering course at all.

35. Ginger Winckler informed that the College of Veterinary Medicine had 80
      percent female enrollment and one of their goals was to reduce this percentage
      because no department wanted a skewed distribution.

36. Cheryl Bullock informed that in the College of Education, there were more
      males in the administration than females. She cited her experience from
      WEPAN when she heard a speaker who talked very highly of his mentoring
      experience and provided constant support and guidance to his mentee while
      she was negotiating for jobs also.

37. Susan Linnemeyer referred to Cheryl's study which highlighted that women
      were rated different than men and women were more open to providing
      explanations than men.

38. Cheryl Bullock shared her results with the committee and said that she found
      out that women were more likely to open the class for questions and then they
      were criticized for faltering and not having the exact answers for it. She also
      cited her experience when female teachers used to come to her with comments
      on their ICES forms about their attire and their male counterparts received no
      such comments.

39. Cheryl Bullock inquired about the University of Illinois' female undergraduate
      students compared to our competitors like Stanford, MIT, etc.

40. Susan Linnemeyer informed that the nationwide percentage has dropped from
      21 to 19 percent. Michigan traditionally had 23 percent, MIT had 33 percent
      and these universities had a bioengineering department, which had 33 percent
      women. We just started this about two years back and in addition to this; these
      universities do not have a huge computer sciences department like ours, which
      had traditionally been male-dominated. Many of these universities had women
      in engineering programs for a long time and we started ours in the late 1990's.
      Purdue's women in engineering program had been in existence for the past 22
      years.

41. Pat Morey inquired if any study had been conducted to look at the impact on
      WIMSE.

42. Susan Linnemeyer informed that there were efforts being planned to look into
      it.