University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Chancellor's Committee on the Status of Women

Meeting Minutes

1:00-2:00 p.m., 400 Swanlund Administration Building

I. Announcements

A. Welcome to all members and our guest, Kristine Campbell, Coordinator of Research
     for the Office of Public Affairs

II. Old Business

A. Approval of minutes of the May 6, 2005 meeting after a few edits.

III. New Business

A. Cheryl Bullock informed the committee that a faculty member had contacted her to find
     out about the avenues available in case of gender discrimination in matters of promotion.

1. Kathleen Pecknold apprised the committee that the Office of Equal Opportunity
    and Access has a grievance process and they will assist her in seeking help and
    investigate into the matter. In addition, Faculty Advisory Committee would also
    be helpful and every department has a formal process for grievance hearing.
    Kathleen Pecknold told the committee that the faculty member also has the
    freedom to seek outside help if she feels her case is strong.

2. Ginger Winckler raised her concerns that such information should be public
    knowledge and be easily available.

3. Kathleen Pecknold informed the committee members that some departments
    are very small and department heads may pull together an external committee
    to review such cases.

B. Illinois Network of Women in Higher Education: Cheryl Bullock introduced
    Kristine Campbell who has been appointed as a liaison between the University of Illinois
    at Urbana-Champaign and the Illinois Network of American Council on Education
    (ACE).

1. Kristine Campbell apprised the committee about her role on campus as the
    member of the Illinois Network of the ACE and the mission of the Illinois
    Network of Women in Higher Education. She told the committee that the Illinois
    Network is based in Chicago with a mandate of supporting women in higher
    education, from faculty to support staff, identifying women leaders in higher
    education and encourage them to make full use of their potential. It also aims to
    link women at all levels to one another. Her role as the liaison is to inform the
    women on the University campus about the activities of the Illinois Network and
    the ACE and inform the ACE about the issues prevalent on our campus.

2. Kristine Campbell told the committee that she is also involved in planning an
    ACE Women in Higher Education Conference in Fall 2006 in our University and
    is currently reviewing the various venues available, possible issues from our
    campus and speakers.

3. Kristine Campbell walked the committee members through certain women's issues
    that had been coined in this University. She reiterated that our University is very
    fortunate to have so many resources available to discuss women's issues. She
    recalled that many of the past issues revolved around women in engineering and
    referred to a report on the Climate of Women Faculty in the College of Engineering
    prepared in 2000. This report had listed some immediate-term action items like
    creation of more awareness, hiring of more women faculty, issues pertaining to
    family leave and tenure rollback, salary, mentoring and exit interviews. She also
    referred to a national conference WEPAN in 2003, where many women from the
    UIUC campus were involved, including Cheryl Bullock to evaluate if any sort of
    gender bias existed.

4. Dale Bauer informed the committee that this issue was also the topic of her
    research and she offered to present it to the committee members later.

5. Kristine Campbell apprised the committee members of another study done by
    Debra R. Rolison titled 'Can Title IX do for Women in Science and Engineering
    what it has done for women in sports?' and informed that this article was also
    available on the internet. She also referred to a recent study conducted in 2004
    on Women in Engineering and highlighted the main recommendations made by the
    study. The main issues were very similar to those in 2000 and revolved around
    matters of recruitment of more women faculty, career and family, career
    advancement, mentoring, non-traditional, and inter-disciplinary work.

6. Victoria Gonzalez inquired if the salary had increased between 2000 and 2004.

7. Kristine Campbell informed that salary for women assistant and associate
    professor levels had become comparable to those of male professors according to
    the 2004 report. She then referred to some initiatives taken by the Chancellor's
    Committee on the Status of Women in the past years and specifically to the Status
    of Women Faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)
    report drafted in 1999 and the Women Faculty Mentoring initiative in 2001.

8. Kristine Campbell raised her concerns about any follow up on these initiatives
    by the committee and if the committee was still actively targeting these issues.
    She also inquired if we have a formal mentoring program that has been
    developed or a more recent report on the status of women, which she could
    take back to the ACE.

9. Kristine Campbell informed the committee that she was briefly involved in the
    2001 mentoring initiative and it was discussed that one mentoring program is
    insufficient in meeting the needs of both faculty and staff and needs to be
    customized. She also inquired if there was any update on the Gender and Equity
    Senate Committee and the CIC Women Advocacy Network's initiatives or any
    other resources on campus that can be helpful in identifying issues pertaining to
    women in higher education.

10. Cheryl Bullock brought to the committee's notice that she has been working
      with the Secretary, Mansi Sachdev, on a literature review on women's issues
      and is drafting a compilation of various activities on campus on similar issues.
      In addition to this, Cheryl Bullock informed the committee that she would pull
      together a list of issues that the committee has deliberated over in the past
      reports submitted by previous Chairs like Kal Alston and Katherine Anthony.

11. Kathleen Pecknold apprised the committee that CCSW had taken up a faculty
      mentoring initiative under the Chairmanship of Emily Watts, and it was discussed
      with the Dean that some departments, mainly the Library and the English
      department, had a very good mentoring program. However, it was also realized
      that some departments were so different that they needed department-specific
      programs and a report in 2003 made a recommendation to this effect. However,
      subsequent budget constraints did not permit further progress on this issue.
      Kathleen Pecknold also brought to the committee's notice that the mentoring
      program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is very structured. She also
      suggested that Kristine Campbell could contact Peg Rawles at the Office of
      Academic Human Resources for the materials relevant to the mentoring program
      initiative at the University of Illinois.

12. Kathleen Pecknold informed the committee that formal exit interviews are now
      being conducted on campus and Mary Ellen O'Shaughnessey will have data in
      this regard. She also informed the committee that Emily Watts, former CCSW
      Chair, went to the CIC meeting and probably we do have some data in the
      committee's archives regarding this initiative too.

13. Dale Bauer inquired about the actual mandate of the committee.

14. Cheryl Bullock informed the committee that we are charged with the
      responsibility of making recommendations to the Chancellor on the status of
      women and women's issues across campus. She reiterated that as the Chair
      of this committee, she would bring speakers from different fields to share their
      views on pertinent issues.

15. Kathleen Pecknold informed the committee that Carol Livingstone conducts
      an annual faculty equity study around this time of the year.

16. Ginger Winckler emphasized the need to make all the documents and reports
      prepared by the committee available online and update the committee's
      web site regularly.

17. Cheryl Bullock informed the committee that the web site has been updated
      but there seemed to be a problem with multiple web links to access the site.

18. Mansi Sachdev told the committee that she would send out the correct web
      link to the committee members.

19. Kristine Campbell raised her concerns about pulling together all the best
      practices and resources for the forthcoming ACE Network meeting. She also
      inquired about the most effective venues, duration of the conference and the
      campus units that would be interested in hosting the conference.

20. Joyce Wright informed the committee that CCSW had hosted a conference
      in Chicago when Toy Colbert was the Chair and also another conference,
      which was hosted on our campus itself.

21. Cheryl Bullock requested Kristine Campbell to share details about the
      probable months when the conference was being planned.

22. Kristine Campbell told the committee members that initially it was being
      planned for April but the Illinois Network committee members wanted to
      know more about the women's issues on their respective campuses and will
      meet again in February to decide the final time. Thus, tentatively the ACE
      conference is being planned for October 2006 and she was interested in
      finding out if our campus would be willing to host such an event. She also
      wished to inquire about the issues that we would like to know more about
      through such an event, or have experts available on campus to discuss them.
      She suggested that we could invite someone from University of Wisconsin-
      Madison to talk about their mentoring program.

23. Cheryl Bullock inquired about the members that comprise the Illinois Network.

24. Kristine Campbell informed that the Illinois Network committee comprises of
      the Illinois State University, Northwestern University, University of Illinois at
      Chicago, Southern Illinois University and others members representing
      community colleges to large institutions. This committee represents Illinois and
      reports to the national ACE network.

25. Kathleen Pecknold inquired about the kind of problems that formed the focus
      in the last conference that was hosted at UIUC.

26. Joyce Wright brought to the committee's notice that women faculty recruiting
      was a popular issue and preparing women for leadership roles was deliberated
      upon to a large extent also.

27. Kathleen Pecknold informed the committee, that many years ago, sessions
      were organized where people would bring in their CVs or résumé in order to
      receive a critique on them.

28. Kristine Campbell agreed that these sessions were very useful because
      administrative résumés are very different from academic résumés and people
      were able to get expert critique on them.

29. Joyce Wright informed the committee that there were two female presidents
      on campus that spoke on these issues and she offered to check her documents
      to get more information on this.

30. Kathleen Pecknold suggested that Michèle Thompson would be a good
      resource on history of these issues and activities. She also informed that
      Marne Helgeson videotaped women while giving presentations because it
      enabled an efficient way of critiquing one's looks and presentation style. This
      was a good resource to help women become aware of how they present
      themselves both physically and in writing.

31. Dale Bauer suggested to have a panel on advancement in institutions in the
      conference because in her field, the promotion systems seem to be problematic
      and many women faculty members stay at the associate professor level for a
      long time. She also informed that in her opinion, University of Wisconsin-
      Madison had a better system of promotion than it seems to be in operation here
      as they give credit to other contributions made by the faculty member and not
      only the 'second book' as a benchmark.

32. Cheryl Bullock inquired if we were looking for a willing campus unit or
      committee to sponsor and host such a conference.

33. Kristine Campbell informed that we definitely need a campus unit to
      support the conference financially.

34. Cheryl Bullock informed that if some other campus unit agrees to host the
      event, the committee would be willing to have a panel and probably
      Dale Bauer and Joyce Wright would be willing to speak on it.

35. Kristine Campbell informed the committee video conferencing could be
      utilized for the conference. She also raised her concerns about the resources
      available on the campus to host video conferencing.

36. Ginger Winckler suggested that we need representation on the committee
      from the Engineering Department since there are very few women in the field
      and they seemed to have an institutionalized method of staying together. She
      also raised her concerns about there being so few women in the Department
      of Engineering.

37. Dale Bauer informed the committee members that there were only three
      women full professors in the Department of English and many associate and
      assistant professors.

38. Joyce Wright informed that they face a similar problem in the Library, which
      although has a number of women, but very few at the professor level and
      Paula Kaufman has been pushing the case consistently.

39. Kathleen Pecknold brought to the committee's notice that even in good
      departments that have mentoring programs for junior faculty; everything
      seems to end once tenure is received.

40. Jennifer Chung inquired if there was any consciousness of the issues faced
      by women of color on the Illinois Network.

41. Kristine Campbell informed that this issue had not been discussed at the
      meeting but she offered to follow it up with the Illinois Network.

42. Kathleen Pecknold informed that this might be probably because there are
      very few women of any kind in this sector and thus the focus is usually on
      gender issues.

43. Cheryl Bullock recounted her experiences during the engineering study on
      gender biases and informed the committee that she intended to address this
      issue of women in color during that study. However, they were content with
      having enough women as compared to men to conduct interviews for the study.

44. Joyce Wright suggested that we might consider looking towards examples from
      some bigger institutions like Harvard University and Princeton that have had
      problems pertaining to women of color.

45. Cheryl Bullock apprised the committee that Lizanne DeStefano had conducted
      a study that looked into the reasons why a female engineering faculty or graduate
      student would choose the big institutions like MIT over our University.

46. Cheryl Bullock inquired about the strength of the Illinois Network of Women in
      Higher Education.

47. Kristine Campbell informed the committee that there were 30 members present
      at the last meeting out of approximately 50-60 members. She also told that it was
      being desired to host the conference at either the Illinois State University or UIUC
      as it would pull a number of members from southern Illinois. Illinois State
      University had been very active on this group and their Provost was present in the
      last meeting too. Kristine Campbell emphasized that the Illinois Network
      consisted of a very diverse group of women which come together to join forces
      in Illinois to work together for the cause.

48. Kristine Campbell requested the committee to keep her informed of the issues,
      topics and ideas for the conference and possible speakers that would be
      interested.

49. Kathleen Pecknold informed the committee that the University's Secretariat has
      a very strong mentoring program for women clericals above a certain level.

50. Ginger Winckler emphasized the need for publicizing events such as this
      conference in order to make such resources easily accessible to the entire
      university community.

51. Joyce Wright informed the committee that such events are not advertised
      across campus, but usually certain groups are targeted.

52. Kristine Campbell reiterated the importance of having video conferencing and
      so that it can be made easily available to many women simultaneously and to
      those who really need the help. Kristine Campbell also promised that she would
      inform Cheryl Bullock of the decisions that will be made on the administration
      front in February.

53. Jennifer Chung raised her concerns about the availability of childcare at the
      conference venue.

54. Alice Dilts brought to the notice of the committee that the women in services
      would not be comfortable with a video conference as they are not accustomed
      to work with a computer all day long and will not have access to a computer.

55. Ginger Winckler informed that the video conferences are conducted on a
      central place on campus.

56. Cheryl Bullock informed that there are several places on campus were video
      conferencing facility is available.

57. Cheryl Bullock thanked Kristine Campbell for sharing her experiences with
      the committee.

IV. Other Items

A. Patty Garcia inquired if any organization like this committee existed specifically for students.

B. Kathleen Pecknold informed that Office of Women's Programs might be looking into some
     related issues.

C. Cheryl Bullock told the committee that she would contact Emily Watts, Carol Livingstone,
     Susan Larson from Engineering and someone from the Secretariat to talk about their
     mentoring program. Cheryl Bullock also requested Dale Bauer to share her study and findings
     with the committee.

D. Dale Bauer offered to speak about her research in spring semester.