TY - JOUR
T1 - Keeping current
T2 - 124th ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition
AU - Jackson, Nicole D.
AU - Tyler, Kaitlin I.
AU - Li, Yanfen
AU - Chen, Wan Ting
AU - Liu, Chaoyang
AU - Bhargava, Rohit
N1 - Wan-Ting Chen is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, working under the guidance of Professor Yuanhui Zhang. Wan-Ting received her B.Sc in Chemical Engineering from the National Taiwan University and M.S. in Agricultural and Biological Engineering from the University of Illinois. Wan-Ting’s research work has been in the context of developing a synergistically integrated waste-to-energy system, Environment-Enhancing Energy (E2-Energy), that simultaneously produces biofuel, treats wet biowaste and captures carbon dioxide via algae growing and hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL). Wan-Ting’s ongoing work focuses on upgrading of the HTL biocrude oil converted from wet biowaste into transportation fuels by distillation, esterification, thermal cracking, and hydroprocessing with catalysts. Wan-Ting has been a SWE member since 2012 and is aiming for a future career in academia.
Rohit Bhargava is Founder Professor of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with affiliations across several departments (Primary – Bioengineering: Affiliated - Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mechanical Science and Engineering, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Chemistry) as well as the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. Rohit received dual B.Tech. degrees (in Chemical Engineering and Polymer Science and Engineering) from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi in 1996 and his doctoral thesis work at Case Western Reserve University (Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering) was in the area of polymer spectroscopy. He then worked as a Research Fellow at the National Institutes of Health (2000-2005) in the area of biomedical vibrational spectroscopy. Rohit has been at Illinois since as Assistant Professor (2005-2011), Associate Professor (2011-2012) and Professor (2012-). Rohit was the first assistant professor hired into the new Bioengineering department and played a key role in the development of its curriculum and activities. He later founded and serves as the coordinator of the Cancer Community@Illinois, which is slated to become the first technology-focused cancer center in the nation. Research in the Bhargava laboratories focuses on fundamental theory and simulation for vibrational spectroscopic imaging, developing new instrumentation
PY - 2017/6/24
Y1 - 2017/6/24
N2 - According to data from ASEE, women were awarded 23.1% of doctoral degrees and held 15.7% of tenured/tenuretrack faculty faculty positions in 2015 versus 21.3% and 12.7% in 2009, respectively [1, 2]. While promising, the leaky pipeline remains a persistent problem in the recruitment of underrepresented people into tenure track positions. To help overcome this barrier, engineering graduate students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign created the Illinois Female Engineers in Academia Training (iFEAT) program to improve the competitiveness of underrepresented applicants in the tenure-track faculty recruitment process. The program is two-fold. First, seminars and panel discussions lead by faculty representing different engineering disciplines cover a variety of topics related to the job search process. Secondly, peer review sessions over the course of several months allow students to develop their own application materials. Since its founding in 2014, the program has been evaluated by considering four elements: content, format, pace, and climate. The evaluations in the first two years were based on conducting pre-, mid-, and post-surveys as well as voluntary one-on-one exit interviews. For the programs third year, we made significant changes based past participant feedback. Specific topics were expanded to increase understanding and improve familiarity with the application process. The evaluation structure was revised to increase the amount of immediate feedback. In this paper, we discuss how the program has evolved over the three years as well as how our methods for program monitoring have been revised. By incorporating these changes, we hope to continue to prepare high quality female faculty candidates, thereby diminishing the gender gap in engineering academia.
AB - According to data from ASEE, women were awarded 23.1% of doctoral degrees and held 15.7% of tenured/tenuretrack faculty faculty positions in 2015 versus 21.3% and 12.7% in 2009, respectively [1, 2]. While promising, the leaky pipeline remains a persistent problem in the recruitment of underrepresented people into tenure track positions. To help overcome this barrier, engineering graduate students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign created the Illinois Female Engineers in Academia Training (iFEAT) program to improve the competitiveness of underrepresented applicants in the tenure-track faculty recruitment process. The program is two-fold. First, seminars and panel discussions lead by faculty representing different engineering disciplines cover a variety of topics related to the job search process. Secondly, peer review sessions over the course of several months allow students to develop their own application materials. Since its founding in 2014, the program has been evaluated by considering four elements: content, format, pace, and climate. The evaluations in the first two years were based on conducting pre-, mid-, and post-surveys as well as voluntary one-on-one exit interviews. For the programs third year, we made significant changes based past participant feedback. Specific topics were expanded to increase understanding and improve familiarity with the application process. The evaluation structure was revised to increase the amount of immediate feedback. In this paper, we discuss how the program has evolved over the three years as well as how our methods for program monitoring have been revised. By incorporating these changes, we hope to continue to prepare high quality female faculty candidates, thereby diminishing the gender gap in engineering academia.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85030544880&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85030544880&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.18260/1-2--28598
DO - 10.18260/1-2--28598
M3 - Conference article
AN - SCOPUS:85030544880
SN - 2153-5965
VL - 2017-June
JO - ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings
JF - ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings
Y2 - 25 June 2017 through 28 June 2017
ER -