AGLP Hosts Equity in the Job Search Symposium

The second annual Equity in the Job Search Symposium will be held next week, on Friday, February 2, 2018.

This event will provide practical, hands-on workshops to assist graduate students and postdoctoral researchers at all stages of the STEM job search. Integrated with career advice will be data-driven discussions on gender bias to expand the conversation of gender bias to a larger population.

“The point is to bring together discussions of gender bias with advice on the job search,” said organizer Bridget Hegarty, a PhD student and Advanced Graduate Leadership Program (AGLP) fellow. “We want it to be something that doesn’t just have women in the room. Because both men and women exhibit gender bias, everyone needs to be part of the solution."

This year the keynote speaker is Eva Pietri, Assistant Professor at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI).

“She has given a couple of workshops for the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) that were well-received,” Hegarty said. “She has a really great way of presenting information surrounding gender bias.”

There will also be a panel discussions about increasing inclusion in the workplace for women and minorities. A second panel will take on the topic of how grad students can get the most effective mentoring from their principal investigators (PI). Hegarty notes that studies have shown that male students tend to get better mentoring from their PIs.

The afternoon will feature a series of workshops. Brian Frenette, senior associate director of the Office of Career Strategy at Yale, will give a talk on the job search for non-academic careers. Among the topics he’ll cover is how to convey the credentials and skills gained from very specific academic projects in more general terms for potential employers.

For those seeking to stay within academia, Desiree Plata, assistant professor of chemical & environmental engineering, will give a talk on academic job searches.

Katie Donovan, founder of Equal Pay Negotiations LLC, will conduct a workshop on salary negotiation. Suzanne Young, director of Graduate and Postdoctoral Teaching Development at the Center for Teaching and Learning, will lead a workshop on gender bias in written communication.

And Nancy Wayne, professor of physiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, will give a talk on “Self-Promotion and Building Your Confidence.” Wayne is the founder of the Women Advancing Together series of workshops, designed to promote diversity and reduce gender bias in science education. 

“There’s a double bind that women often find themselves in,” Hegarty said. “If they’re seen as competent, then they’re not liked, and if you exhibit too much confidence, it can backfire. Dr. Wayne will talk about the research surrounding that and how women can effectively promote their own work.”

The symposium is being organized as part of Hegarty's Advanced Graduate Leadership Program (AGLP) fellowship. Support for the symposium comes from AGLP, the Women Faculty Forum, the Office of Graduate Student Development and Diversity, the Office of Career Strategy, and the Title IX Office.

The daylong event takes place at Luce Hall. The morning will be in the main auditorium, room 101, and the afternoon workshops will be in rooms 202 and 203. Admission is free but advance registration is advised for the afternoon workshops and for lunch. To register and for more information go to the event website.