October 2006
Dear AWN members,
It is already October, and the Cardinals are once again in post-season play. GO CARDS!! As your President for the 2005-06 year, I want to thank the Board members who served: Tamara Doering (secretary), Dayna Early (treasurer), Susan Fitzpatrick, (President Elect), and counselors Shalini Shenoy, Leesa Galatz, Phyllis Hanson, and Ann Gronowski. The theme for my year was “Get Organized” and we, as a board, got organized in the following ways:
- Helped organize the inaugural Welcome for Women in Science event at the King Center.
- Incorporated a business meeting into the Fall AWN event. Solicited attendees at Fall Event for their ideas of what they would like AWN to work on.
- Proposed income statements for the treasury that included a budget, receipts, and expenditures by category.
- Proposed a new membership committee to organize how we communicate with past members, current members, and recruit new members.
- Organized the membership list so that we could correctly identify members.
- Wrote to Chairs of each Department telling them about AWN and encouraging them to encourage their female faculty to find out about AWN.
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Organized and bound all past AWN Presidents’ binders to have an official, historical record of each of their years.
- Created a template for AWN to heighten awareness to and change behavior regarding Medical School Business – such as all male speakers and awardees at various functions.
- Helped fund a visit by Susan Wood, former Assistant Commissioner for Women’s Heath and Director of the FDA office of Women’ Health.
- Nominated Lee Robins for the Peter Raven Award of the 150th Anniversary of the Academy of Sciences in St. Louis. She won!! Successfully solicited funding of 2 tables for the award event – one from the Dean, one from Dr. Zorumski (Head-Psychiatry).
- Defined protocol that the past President of AWN would be an ex officio member of the ECFC; this slot will change each year.
- Solicited photos to update the AWN website.
- Organized another successful Women’s Health Symposium (8th Annual).
- Began discussion for a Forum with past Presidents, to highlight accumulated knowledge, discuss achievements, but most importantly, enumerate future goals.
- Presented a brown bag seminar on work-life balance.
- Hosted a visit with Donna Dean, President of AWIS, at the Spring event.
- Awarded 2 student leadership awards, one mentor award and for the first time, an AWN service award which went to Karen O’Malley.
- Developed a second survey of female faculty, this time online, which was completed by 157 out of almost 400 women! Data are being analyzed by the current President for dissemination.
- Found female mentors for the inaugural Ferring Scholars program, a summer mentoring program for young women in high school.
I wanted to discuss a couple of other very important issues. Because of past successes of AWN, and a potential for an ADVANCE grant from the NSF, the focus of our group was a bit tentative. AWN went through a soul-searching re-organization in Spring 2006 and emerged re-energized and revitalized. Our survey confirmed that a high proportion of female faculty are concerned about too few women in leadership positions; about having too few women with Endowed Professorships (9/120); about too few women as Heads of Departments (N=0); about too few women on important university committees; about too few women speakers at university functions; and about too few women receiving awards. No wonder “Too Few Women” has been adopted as the theme of the 2006-07 AWN Board.
During my year, I also applied and was accepted to ELAM; I am only the second woman from WUSM to be accepted (Leslie Kahl was the first, 10 years ago). I am learning a tremendous amount about academic leadership and intend to share this knowledge with other women.
Finally, I want to say that it was an exceptional learning experience for me to be President, though I didn’t realize all I had learned until my year was over. I thank you, the members, for allowing me the opportunity to serve. I wish Ann all the best in her year. Already, the Board’s pace is tremendous! Keep going AWN!
Sincerely,
Linda B. Cottler, PhD, MPH
AWN President, 2005-06 |
