Administrators are busy hammering out the details of a program to increase the representation of women in the quantitative sciences.
Scheduled to begin in January, Project ADVANCE is designed as a response to statistics showing that women at Duke and across the country are less likely to major in fields such as math, engineering and physics.
Duke's experimental year-long program-established through a $100,000 National Science Foundation grant-attempts to draw more first-year women into these areas through several co-ed spring seminars, a mentoring program, a public lecture series and a multi-semester class, "Perspectives in Science."
This seminar was originally designed to include only women, but administrators altered the plan this week.
Now, although Project ADVANCE is open only to women-who apply through a separate application, like the FOCUS program-the course will be open to all students.
Lee Willard, associate dean for academic planning and special projects in Trinity College, said there were "a lot of issues we hadn't really talked through" regarding the seminar.
Willard compared the number of qualitative and quantitative female science majors at Duke. Biological sciences like environmental science, biology and psychology draw many female majors, she explained: 59 percent, 52 percent and 78 percent, respectively.
However, women are only 26 percent of computer science majors, 29 percent of physics majors and 30 percent of mathematics majors at Duke.
Professor of Mathematics Andrea Bertozzi, the only female tenure-track professor in her department, will be teaching the new "Perspectives in Science" seminar next fall.
"It is our intention to offer a course that is open to all Duke students, including both men and women, provided they meet [the] mathematics prerequisites...," Bertozzi said. "These requirements are currently under discussion by the mathematics faculty and the ADVANCE steering committee."
She also discussed the impetus for the original proposal for Project ADVANCE.
"The attrition of women from scientific career paths is a well-known and well-documented problem," said Bertozzi, who has participated in several national mentoring panels and conferences. "They represent a large talent pool who end up becoming discouraged from pursuing the quantitative sciences, for a variety of reasons, and going into other fields. The attrition occurs at all levels, including college, graduate school and postdoctoral levels."
But bringing a women-only course to a coeducational university may have raised questions about Duke's anti-discrimination policy.
"I think it's desirable to have a course that has a particular focus on a particular group...," said Vice President for Institutional Equity Myrna Adams, who had not heard about this particular grant, which takes effect Jan. 1. "But I don't think any student could be denied the opportunity to enroll in any course so long as the student meets the academic criteria required for admission to the course."
Before this week's change, Dean of Trinity College Bob Thompson said the University's lawyers had approved the project, adding that several academic studies have shown that women perform better in quantitative science courses that are gender-specific.
Mathematics major Angela Bohn, a Trinity senior, said she notices a "fair amount" of women in her classes, but added that the majority of her classes, especially in the upper levels, contain more men than women.
Bohn believes that the situation may improve with the project's introduction, and that participation from female professors such as Bertozzi can "help make women knowledgeable of [the different] opportunities... for the advancement of women in math."
The seminar will emphasize research, Bertozzi said. "These students will learn about the research techniques and will have to understand examples of the use of sophisticated quantitative methods in research," she said.
Willard said the program is an important step toward "increasing the flow and persistence of women in the science pipeline.... We think that the intentional linking of the various curricular components of the first year will be attractive to students and hope that the opportunities to meet and understand first-hand the research and careers of outstanding scientists and mathematicians both within and outside Duke will be extraordinary."
Jaime Levy contributed to this story.
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