Women In Science Discuss Changes

While professors and deans took to Lowell Lecture Hall yesterday to discuss Harvard’s president, members of the student group Women in Science at Harvard-Radcliffe (WISHR) held a session to brainstorm ways in which current University policies hinder female students from concentrating in the sciences.

This meeting was the first in a series of three sessions meant to generate suggestions for the Task Force on Women in Science and Engineering, one of the two committees recently created by University President Lawrence H. Summers in response to the controversy about his January remarks.

Barbara J. Grosz, Higgins Professor of Natural Sciences and chair of the science and engineering task force—and a pointed critic of Summers in recent weeks—spoke at the beginning of the meeting, but left the students to work the details out themselves.

“This is a brainstorming session,” she said. “I’m really here to move things along.”

She asked that any other comments at the meeting be kept off the record.

The six students present—four of whom were female science concentrators—attributed the disproportionate number of male science concentrators to a variety of factors.

But all agreed that the this disparity was perpetuated from the beginning of their first years at college.

Students cited their experiences in introductory courses as particularly traumatic—saying that some male teaching fellows would drive their classes at relentless rate and would deflect questions from female students.

To counter this, Tracy E. Nowski ’07 and Patricia Li ’07, co-chairs of the policy committe of WISHR, suggested optional sections created specifically for women, perhaps being even taught by female teaching fellows.

And Li and Nowski said that the potentially stressful experience of placement exams can turn women off from the heavy competition of the sciences.

“Even a two or three hour review session, right before placement tests would help,” said Nowski, who is a concentrator in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

“Harvard told me I was bad at math...what else was I supposed to think?”

Li, a chemistry concentrator, and also a Crimson editor, reiterated Nowski’s point.

“It’s also stressful to see other people being placed into harder classes,” she said.

Sophia K. McKinley ’06, chair of the speakers committee of WIHSHR’s National Symposium on the Advancement of Women in Science, added that female students can sometimes be less confident of their abilities in science.

“Intimidation is a big problem,” McKinley said. “There are people who come in who are physics olympic medalists.”

As a result of this, Nowski said that Harvard students are unwilling to experiment with outside subjects related to their concentration.

“You are pigeon-holed when you come to Harvard,” Nowski said. “Science people say that they can’t write papers, and humanities people think they can’t do science.”

These issues, combined with science courses’ incompatibility with a study abroad program, are the leading reasons why fewer women declare concentrations in science at the end of freshman year, according to Li,

To help attract female concentrators, students suggested class activities such as an ice cream social for Chemistry 5 students.

Other options that the students discussed included starting an early mentorship programs for female freshmen considering the sciences.

Previously, WISHR has also discussed ways to streamline funding for summer housing for women working in laboratory research, an issue Summers and Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 have agreed to look into, according to Limor S. Spector ’07, secretary of WISHR.