WISEST has offered support and development of STEM women faculty through the following venues:

A. Faculty development workshops through the OFA (WISEST PI Rao and Tam).
Presentations available online:

2008 Promotion and Tenure Seminars

West Campus, Junior Faculty ,listen to the MP3 audio of this presentation
West Campus, Mid-Career Faculty
East Campus, Junior Faculty, listen to the MP3 audio of this presentation
East Campus, Mid-Career Faculty

2007 Promotion and Tenure Seminars

Promotion and Tenure Seminar for Mid-Career Faculty (Agenda, Handouts, MP3 Audio, Podcast)
Promotion and Tenure Seminar for Junior Faculty (Agenda, Handouts, MP3 Audio, Podcast)

2006 Promotion and Tenure Seminar

Promotion and Tenure Seminar 2006 (Agenda and Handouts)

Also, New Faculty Orientation Workshops are held in September every year.

B. Career-span Mentoring through the OFA
Begun Sept 8, 2008: a new group mentoring model. Instead of individual pairs of mentor-mentee, mentoring groups of 3 to 5 junior faculty members and one or two senior colleagues meet two or three times a semester (or more often if the group agrees) to set goals, identify challenges, and discuss teaching, research, P&T, etc. Groups are based on academic interests such as discipline or methodology so that members can share details about their scholarship and courses. The senior group leader provides the same kind of advice and support faculty mentors have given in the past, but the junior members will be able to develop collegial relationships among themselves and provide peer mentoring.

C. WISER funds were awarded
AY08-09 10 STEM Asst Profs. (Emily Minor (BioS), Mara Martinez and Jing Wang (MSCS), D’arcy Meyer-Dombard (EaES), Ying Liu and Belinda Akpa (ChemE), Daniela Tuninetti,(ECE), Elodie Adida, Elisa Budyn, and Carmern Lilley (MIE) were awarded small grants for research support such as research and conference travel, facility fees, materials and supplies, software.

AY07-08 Asst. Prof. Q. Tian Wang in Biological Sciences ($20K) to aid in managing her lab during a major life cycle event. Just before a family leave, Professor Wang hired and trained a technician to take care of the lab's transgenic mice stocks. The technician also took over ordering and other lab administration tasks allowing Dr. Wang to spend her time on mentoring students, doing important experiments, and tending to departmental duties.

AY06-07 two researchers to get back on track and resume their careers after a period of intensive caregiving: Prof. Olga Barannikova, Physics and Prof. Zhichun Zhu, ECE. Dr. Zhu said, "The WISER award was used for course buyout. This allowed me to teach only one course during Spring 07 when my baby was born. With the reduced teaching load, I was able to maintain my research activity during this life-changing event. I worked with other colleagues and my Ph.D. student in a research project funded by NSF and published a paper in the 2007 International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software. The WISER fund is acknowledged in the paper."

2005-06 WISER Fund Dr. Ju-Lee Kim, CS

2004-05 WISER Fund Dr. Mitchell Theys, CS, Dr. Barbara DiEugenio,CS

D. Networking luncheons (Facilitator subcommittee on Faculty Development)
May 6, 2009 (? STEM women faculty, plus WISEST Director)

Sep 17, 2008 (28 STEM women faculty, plus WISEST team)

Apr 20, 2007 (20 STEM women faculty, 11 WISEST Facilitators and the WISEST team)

E. The Facilitator subcommittee on Faculty Development is gathering together two major support/development efforts for junior women STEM faculty:
(1) a secure web-repository of successful STEM proposals (grouped according to agency, program, single investigator or collaborative, major equipment) donated by senior faculty in STEM, and (2) a Red Team of senior faculty volunteers who have agreed to be called upon at short notice to do a panel review of a proposal draft at early, middle, or pre-final stage prior to submission. Both these efforts resulted from suggestions brought up during a networking lunch.

F. Partner Accommodation
Led by WISEST PI Meena Rao, UIC entered into a partnership with the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, Argonne National Laboratory and Fermi Laboratory as the lead institutions in forming GC-HERC (Greater Chicago Higher Education Recruitment Consortium). The premise of HERC is to increase inter-institutional collaboration among colleges, universities and research centers to post open positions, host a web-based search engine, list relocation resources, and provide the ability to link job search profiles with a spouse or partner. This effort will greatly assist the ability to find appropriate employment for spouses and partners which is particularly critical when hiring women and underrepresented minorities. The GC HERC was launched at a meeting attended by the WISEST PI and WISEST Facilitator Martin Newcomb on April 18, 2007 and over 100 area institutions of higher education were invited. The Dual Career section is particularly helpful not only with job alerts but with a list of dual career web sites, articles and books.

A copy of the GC-HERC flyer composed by WISEST PI MoYin Tam is provided to faculty candidates at the campus visit.