ABSTRACT


A national diversity study published in 2002 revealed that despite several decades of increasing enrollments for women in undergraduate and graduate science and engineering programs, women remain underrepresented in science and engineering positions nationwide. This disparity between the number of women trained in a field and the number of women occupying positions in the field is a growing concern because it prevents funding agencies and universities from capitalizing on the investment they have made on the education of women, and it perpetuates the existing mismatch between the diversity of the scientific workforce and that of the U.S. population as a whole. This diversity study, as well as concerns within the physical oceanography community, prompted the initiation of an effort to examine whether mentoring efforts could aid the retention of junior women in the field. Though institutions are increasingly focusing on the role of mentoring in the early career stages of a young scientist, it is generally recognized that a discipline-based community can also foster success during a scientist's early career. Toward this end, a community-mentoring program has been designed that would provide continuity from the Ph.D. attainment through the early years of a young woman's scientific career. The program has several elements including the development Internet-based mentoring that reaches out to the physical oceanography community as a whole and the Pattullo conference, which is targeted to junior women. In addition to the program itself, this work establishes oversight responsibility, methods to engage the community, and metrics for gauging program success. The effort's intellectual merits is geared towards increasing the retention of women who have been educationed in physical oceanography. The broader impacts arise from the efforts to create a scientific workforce whose diversity matches that of the student population and the U.S. population as a whole. This effort, which has come to be known as MPOWIR, Mentoring Physical Oceanography Women to Increase Retention is funded by the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, the Department of Energy and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

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