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Navigating Pregnancy And Parenthood: Work-Family Considerations For Men And Women Graduate Students In Stem And Other Disciplines, Ziyu Long, Patrice M. Buzzanell, Abigail Selzer King

ADVANCE-Purdue Gender and STEM Research Symposium

Scholars and non-academicians consider popular key advantages to be flexibility in career trajectories as well as autonomy and control over one’s schedule and the work that one chooses to do (e.g., Buzzanell & Lucas, 2006, 2013). Although academic careers seem to offer these benefits, there are questions about whether and how such flexibility actually occurs, particularly in times of pregnancy/adoption, family leave, and work-life “balance” (e.g., Stone, 2008). Implicit in academic flexibility is that graduate student careers might evidence some of the same flexibility but within institutional structures that can range from lockstep to a build-you-own-plan and timetable model. In …

Evaluation Of Women And Men Professors: How Gender Scripts Affect Students' Assessments, Elizabeth A. Hoffmann

ADVANCE-Purdue Gender and STEM Research Symposium

All universities strive for high quality teaching. In the late 1970’s, colleges and universities began systematically soliciting feedback from students regarding teaching. Rather than relying on colleague-evaluations, the new administrative philosophy advocated bringing in students’ own assessment of their professors. Today, these student assessments are often the only evaluation of college teaching.

The change to include students’ perspectives was particularly supported by women faculty. Ironically, some research suggests that student evaluations might be quite biased against women professor. Such a bias would not only be unfair, but it would have substantial consequences for those women faculty, since student evaluation are …