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8/27/2009

ADVANCE awards grants to departments
Inaugural departmental grants focus on mentoring programs

BY JADE BOYD
Rice News staff

Rice's ADVANCE program has awarded grants to six academic departments to establish pilot programs for mentoring junior faculty. ADVANCE officials say they hope the programs will foster a more diverse science and engineering workforce by increasing the representation and retention of female faculty.

	JEFF FITLOW
	Brendan Hassett, left, professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics, said the ADVANCE grant will allow new faculty member Danijela Damjanović, right, assistant professor of mathematics, to bring respected scholars to campus for academic colloquia.

"The pilot mentoring programs will provide models that other departments can learn from as they design their own programs for mentoring junior faculty," said Jan Rinehart, executive director of ADVANCE. "Ultimately, our goal is to create a more supportive, more equitable climate in all academic departments at Rice."

One of the inaugural grants went to the Department of Mathematics. Department Chair Brendan Hassett said Mathematics' mentoring program is designed to speed up the integration of new faculty into the department by giving them the authority -- and the budget -- to bring respected scholars to campus for academic colloquia.

"It's a good strategy to bring young scholars into departmental decision-making as soon as possible," he said. "Giving them responsibility for planning colloquia is one way to do that."

Hassett said the strategy is particularly useful in mathematics because collaboration and new ideas -- the sorts of things that come from bringing outside experts to campus -- are critically important to mathematicians.

"When we gain an insight or get a new idea, we can act on it almost instantly," he said. "We don't have to redirect laboratories with lots of equipment to pursue something new. We can be very nimble, and as a result, mathematicians are constantly forming new collaborations and scientific connections."

Danijela Damjanović joined Rice as assistant professor of mathematics this fall. She comes to Rice from Harvard University, where she served as a Benjamin Pierce lecturer in mathematics and as co-organizer of the Brandeis-Harvard-MIT-Northeastern Joint Mathematics Colloquium. Hassett said Damjanović will organize Rice's weekly mathematics colloquium, and the ADVANCE grant will allow her to bring in more senior scholars than might otherwise be possible.

Rice's ADVANCE program awarded its first six departmental grants this fall to: •    Biochemistry and Cell Biology •    Bioengineering •    Civil and Environmental Engineering •    Mathematics •    Mechanical Engineering and Material Science •    Political Science

"This gives her the opportunity to make connections to people in her research specialty from across the country. And it sends a signal that Dr. Damjanović has influence over what we do here at Rice, and that's a good signal to send," Hassett said. "It will also promote interactions with senior members of our department."

Damjanović said she is already inviting colloquia speakers to campus and meeting with colleagues in the Mathematics Department to discuss invitations.

"It's important to have a mix of different types of colloquium speakers," she said. "Sometimes I focus on people I've heard before and who give a really inspiring presentation. That can be particularly useful for graduate students who haven't yet decided what they want to study."

Having the extra ADVANCE funds will be particularly useful for extending the visits of colloquia speakers in her field, Damjanović said.

"If you can extend someone's visit for three or four days, it allows you to exchange more information and increases the possibilities for collaboration," she said.

ADVANCE is a National Science Foundation-funded program that seeks to increase the opportunities for hiring and advancement of women scientists and engineers. The university won a five-year ADVANCE Institutional Transformation award from NSF in 2006.

Through the ADVANCE program, Rice has committed to examine its administrative processes and to remove artificial barriers that hamper the success of female scholars in science and engineering. ADVANCE also hopes to foster cultural changes that will create a more encouraging environment for the success of women faculty in departments where they are historically underrepresented.