After noticing a shortage in the number of tenured women professors, two women from the Department of Plant Biology decided to take action by forming a discussion group.
Anna Monfils, an MSU alumna and instructor in the department, and Kathleen Kay, a plant biology graduate student - along with about 25 female plant biology students - met Friday with tenured women faculty members in a question-and-answer session.
Monfils and Kay said they hope to start a discussion group that meets regularly to help women in plant biology with their career goals and Friday's discussion was the first.
"I was having concerns about women in science having role models," Monfils said. "I just decided to put together what everyone was thinking about doing but wasn't."
Monfils said she wasn't sure if the sessions would catch on and has high hopes the department will continue the discussions.
"I wanted to bring up many issues like how do you present yourself as a woman in a mostly male position," she said.
The main goal in forming the group is to build a community of women that can rely on one another for help when needed, Monfils said.
Monfils and Kay said they were questioning staying in academics themselves and needed older women in the department to help them.
"We were curious to know what we should do to get more women to stay on the academic track," Kay said. "We want to focus on grad students because many women drop out after grad school. There's no shortage of female undergrads in the department.
"The problem is after grad school, they are choosing not to pursue post-doctoral positions."
Diane Ebert-May, Barbara Sears and Frances Trail were the professors who came to talk about their experiences as tenured women faculty in a predominantly male environment.
Kay wanted to know how it's possible to have a family, yet still remain a respected academic faculty member.
Ebert-May had two major pieces of advice for the women: Make sure to keep time for yourself outside of work and hire a housekeeper. When Ebert-May attended grad school, she was in a class of all males.
"I reveled in being the only woman in grad school," she said. "You have to milk it for all it's worth, like I did."
