The results of the election for officers and counselors of the Academic Womens Network for the 1992-1993 academic year have been tabulated. The newly elected officers are: Ellen Li, Present-Elect; Sue Cullen, Secretary; Sherida Tollefsen, Treasurer; Elaine Krul and Diane Merritt, Counselors. The AWN Board of Directors is rounded out by: Linda Pike, President; and Counselors Dixie Anderson and Helen Donis-Keller, serving the second year of their two year terms. Congratulations to all!

The spring dinner for the Academic Women's Network was held on June 15 at Agusti's Restaurant. The dinner was attended by over 60 women. The after dinner speaker was Virginia Weldon who spoke on ways to make organizations more supportive of their female employees and more sensitive to women's issues. Thanks to everyone who helped make this evening such a big success. Plans are currently being made for another dinner in late October or early November.

As of August 14, AWN had a total membership of 112 women. This represents a 46% increase over last year's total!

The first of three informal brown bag lunch seminars sponsored by AWN for members and trainees was held on Monday July 27. Organized by the AWN Committee on Promotion and Tenure, it included a panel discusion featuring members Helen Donis-Keller, Deborah Gersell, Sherida Tollefsen and Heather White describing their experience in obtaining tenure. On Monday August 31 the Committe on Childcare and Maternity Leave sponsored a similar session on Juggling a Career and Family. In both cases, the formal presentations were followed by open discussion. To judge by the overflowing crowd in the 5th floor library classroom and the numerous questions from the audience, the seminars were an overwhelming success. The next AWN brown bag seminar is scheduled for Monday September 28 when Diane Merritt (AWN Counselor, Dept. of OB/GYN) has organized a session on "Delaying Parenthood". Plans for additional seminars are currently being made.

Congratulations to the following members:

Susan Church, for her promotion from Instructor to Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics.

Sue Cullen, for her promotion to Associate Vice Chancellor for Research.

Helen Donis-Keller, for her appointment as Director of the Genetics Division in the Department of Surgery.

Ellen Li, for her promotion from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine.

Jean Nerbonne, for her promotion from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Molecular Biology.

Jane Phillips-Conroy and Linda Pike who received Distinguished Service Teaching Awards from the medical school class of 1995. This award is given to professors whose lectures, out of class assistance and overall style most enhanced the students' learning experience during the 1991-92 school year.

Penny Shackelford, for her promotion from Associate Professor to Professor in the Department of Pediatrics.

Sherida Tollefsen, who was elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation. Members are elected on the basis of the quality and originality of their scientific work, independence, productivity, and stature in their field of research.

Teresa Vietti, who was the recipient of the 1992 John Krey III Memorial Award for Outstanding Scientist/Researcher. The award pays tribute to Vietti's excellence in oncology and cancer control.

The AWN has been participating in discussions with university administrators who are in the process of establishing a uniform maternity leave policy for academic staff. At present, the policy for academic staff is different (and more lenient) than that for other university employees. It is necessary for the University to establish a policy that can be applied to all employees equally. In addition, consideration is being given to the establishment of a family leave policy which would provide leave for fathers who are the primary caregivers for infants, families adopting children, or families providing care to sick children or parents. To determine what type of leave policy academic women felt was reasonable, the AWN Committee on Childcare and Maternity Leave, chaired by Elaine Krul, polled our members and tabulated the results. The vast majority (97%) indicated that they thought a written policy specifiying maternity leave at Washington University was necessary but only slightly more than half (52%) felt that the same policy should apply to academic faculty and non-academic staff. Over 80% agreed that there should be a policy for paternity leave (81%), adoption of an infant (90%) and family leave to care for a sick relative (85%). Most respondents (>90%) thought that any policy should include six weeks paid leave though opinions differed on whether additional time off should be accrued sick leave plus vacation or unpaid leave.

Of the respondents, 71% had children and of those, 93% were working when they became pregnant. Only 8% of the women who became pregnant while working were aware of their employer's maternity leave policy prior to becoming pregnant. Responses to the question of how much time a woman took off from work due to childbirth/infant care indicated that most women were back at work by 12 weeks after their first child (6 to 8 weeks on average) and slightly earlier after their second and subsequent children (see chart below).

This information has been passed on to the university committee charged with establishing a uniform family leave policy for WUMS. AWN members Leslie Kahl and Barbara Monsees are members of that committee.

The 1992-1993 edition of the AWN Directory is currently being compiled. If you have not yet returned your information form for your entry in the directory (or did not receive one), please contact Linda Pike at 362-9058.

The Olin Fellowship selection committee at Washington University has selected 7 women to receive the Mr. and Mrs. Spencer T. Olin Fellowship for Women. This program provides annual financial support to outstanding women in any of the graduate or professional schools of Washington University. Three women have been selected as fellows in Medicine or in the Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences. They are: Rosalie Fonseca (Medicine); Jean Lawrence (Biological Sciences); and, Jennifer Payne (Medicine). AWN members Sherida Tollefsen and Rosalind Kornfeld were on the selection committee.

The Olin Conference Planning Committee has invited Shirley M. Tilghman, Ph.D, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and Professor of Biology at Princeton to be the keynote speaker for the Olin conference entitled "Are Health Care and Biomedical Research Women's Issues?". Dr. Tilghman's address will be on Wednesday, October 21, 1992 at 11 A.M. in Graham Chapel. At 2 P.M. a two-hour panel discussion on the same topic will be held. In addition to Dr. Tilghman, the panel will include AWN member Dr. Joanne Mortimer, Clinical Director of Oncology; Dr. Susan Wood from the Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues; Dr. Lillian Gonzalez-Pardo, President of the American Medical Women's Association; Dr. Jacqueline Walcott-McQuigg, Post Doctoral Research Associate in the Department of Public Health Nursing at the University of Illinois at Chicago; and Gina Kolata, medical science writer with The New York Times. All are welcome.

Have you or any AWN member received an award, promotion or other honor? AWNings is anxious to publish information on the achievements of its members. Please use the form at the end of this newsletter to drop a note to Linda Pike so that such material can be included in AWNings.

Women would fare better in biomedical careers if more flexible family and medical leave policies were implemented, mentor relationships were improved, and junior investigator positions were created, the American Medical Women's Association testified at a March 2-3 NIH hearing.

"The number one concern" of the AMWA "is the medical profession's lack of accommodation to the biological needs of its women professionals," association president Lillian Gonzalez-Pardo asserted. "Despite a dramatic shift in the composition of the medical workforce, the medical hierarchy has failed to recognize the inevitable physical and career-timing demands of pregnancy and parenthood for women physicians. The result is an outdated structure that unduly penalizes women, and now harms all medical professionals." AMWA recommends a minimum of 12 weeks of family and medical leave and childcare facilities in all hospitals.

With regard to representation of women on medical school faculties, Palma Formica, American Medical Association pointed out that in 1991, only 9.6% of the women serving in medical school faculties held the rank of full professor. Citing a 1987 article in the Journal of the American medical Women's Association, she noted that "while it often takes a woman 20 years to become a full professor, it takes men approximately 12 years to reach the same level." American Psychiatric Association representative Carolyn Robinowitz also commented that there are few women in senior positions in academic psychiatry. At present, there are only two female chairs of departments of psychiatry out of 120 university medical school psychiatry departments.

In the field of microbiology, women outnumber men by 60% to 40% at the level of instructor at universities but the number of women drops sharply as the academic rank increases, Anne Morris Hooke said. In higher ranks, men outnumber women (assistant professor: 75% to 25%; associate professor: 82% to 18%; and professor: 92% to 8%).

"The situation, at least in microbiology seems clear," she maintains. "Women and men enter the profession in equal numbers but women leave at the doctoral and post-doctoral levels. The reasons for this are unclear, but absent a study to determine those reasons, educated guesses and anecdotal evidence point to the inescapable conclusion that women are disproportionately burdened with the responsibilities of parenthood."

The need to promote women into senior positions in biomedical science was also emphasized by ORWH Director Vivian Pinn. "Increasing the number of women in leadership and senior positions in biomedical careers and academia is equally important as increasing the overall numbers, if women are to be equal participants in making decisions about what research will be done, and who will be doing it," she said.

(Excerpted from F-D-C Reports, Inc., 1992)

More women than ever have chosen to seek election to state and national offices. Missouri's own Gerri Rothman-Serot is viewed as having the best chance nationally at unseating an incumbant candidate for Senate, Senator Kit Bond. (Bond is one of only 10 senators who voted against the NIH reauthorization bill because it overturned the federal ban on fetal tissue research.)

The Missouri Women's action fund is a non-partisan organization that has helped in several successful women's bids for public office, such as Carol Mosley Braun. For additional information on this organization contact AWN member Diana Gray (Box 8050).

The Academy of Science of St. Louis is a newly established organization whose object is to bring scientists and the public together. The first goal of this organization is to establish a clearinghouse containing information on local scientists and engineers who would be willing to participate in community outreach programs. Many of your may have already been contacted by this organization as a result of your affiliation with Washington University. AWN has been asked to supply the Academy of Science of St. Louis with a copy of our new directory so that all of our members can be asked if they would like to participate in their clearninghouse project. For more information contact Linda Pike.

(Excerpted from NIH Alumni Association Update, Vol. 4, No. 2)

At a recent NIH panel discussion on the status of women scientists, Dr. Ruth Kirschstein, a 36-year NIH veteran, told of her early days as a Clinical Center pathology resident. Ater years at the laboratory bench, she became a lab chief in 1965, and assistant director in 1972 of what was then NIH's Division of Biologics Standards. Her research career progressed further when the division was transferred from NIH to FDA, where Kirschstein assumed the position of deputy associate commissioner for science. After 2 years there, she missed NIH and decided to return. She contacted some of her former supervisors, provided her CV and was told there were no open positions at that time.

However, Kirschstein said she knew of an opportunity and wasted no time suggesting it. A search committee had been formed to find a replacement for the newly vacated position of director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

"So I asked about the position and was told, "Oh, I hadn't thought of you for such a position," Kirschstein recalled. "So I looked at them and I said, "Well why don't you?" She became the first woman director of NIGMS on Sept. 1, 1974.

"The importance of that story," she said, "is not that I got the position. It's that 20 years ago, by forcing the persons in charge to think about anyone who was qualified--woman, minority, man, whoever--they did so. We must make the system work properly."

The NSF Visiting Professorships for Women program provides a woman scientist or engineer with the opportunity to undertake research at a host institution which is a university or four-year college. In addition to her research, the visiting professor undertakes lecturing, counseling, and other interactive activities to increase the visibility of women scientists in the academic environment of the host institution and to provide encouragement for other women to pursue careers in science and engineering. The award support period ranges from 6 to 36 months.

This program might be a good way to attract and then recruit women faculty to Washington University. Please bring it to the attention of eligible women faculty at other institutions and to administrators at WUMS who might be interested in pursuing this as a means of recruitment. Contact Sue Cullen for more information.

NSF also sponsors a Faculty Awards for Women Scientists and Engineers program. This is an effort to recognize outstanding women faculty nominated by their academic institutions through the provisions of research awards. Think about nominating some of our women faculty for this award! M ore information can be obtained from Sue Cullen or by calling NSF directly at (202) 357-7456.

Many scientific and medical societies sponsor career recognition awards for outstanding members of the society. A good way to obtain visibility for women scientists and physicians at Washington University as well as at other institutions would be to nominate women for these awards. If you see advertisements soliciting nominations for such awards, think about nominating someone or bring it to the attention of Helen Donis-Keller, chairman of the AWN Committee on Promotion and Tenure.

The Journal of Women's Health is a multidisciplinary journal that publishes peer-review papers on diseases or conditions that hold greater risk for or are more prevalent among women. In addition to original articles and review articles, the journal includes point-counterpoint discussions; reviews of important meetings; abstracts of selected seminars; news from women's health networks; book reviews and other material relevant to the professional advancement of women's health specialization. For further information regarding this journal contact AWN member Helen Kornblum.

The AWN is organizing several new committees and is searching for members interested in participating in the work done by these committees. In addition, new members are needed to serve on all of the committees currently in place. If you are interested in becoming more involved in AWN by serving on a committee, please fill out the form below indicating your interest and send to Linda Pike, Box 8022.

Name __________________________

Box Number _____________________

Phone __________________________

I would be interested in receiving information and/or serving on the following committee(s):

Program Committee ____

Promotion/Tenure ____

Recruitment ____

PublicRelations/Newsletter ____

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Childcare/Maternity Leave ____

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Promotions or Awards Received by AWN Members:

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Last modified: September 15, 2003