By Alec Rosenberg
The UC Diversity Pipeline Initiative
encourages female health professional students to pursue academic
careers. Here are three tips from conference speakers.
Find a
mentor or team of mentors: "It's very difficult for one person to
fulfill all mentoring needs for an individual," said UC Davis
cardiovascular medicine professor Amparo Villablanca, who currently has
six mentees. She suggests having multiple mentors who can advise on
career, personal and professional development. For more information,
she recommends viewing the proceedings of a 2007 National Institutes of
Health workshop on mentoring women in the biomedical careers chaired by Vivian Pinn, pipeline conference keynote speaker.
Negotiate
from the start: Once you've landed a job, your work is just beginning.
Amy Levine, director of the UCSF Center for Gender Equity, said it's
important to negotiate from the start. Individuals who negotiate their
first salary stand to gain $500,000 by age 60 — and men are four times
as likely as women to negotiate their first salary, Levine said. "We
are penalized if we don't negotiate," she said.
Create your own path: "You can do research. You can focus on teaching. It's up to the individual on where you want to focus your energies," said UCLA Vice Provost Rosina Becerra. She and colleague Belinda Tucker recently received a grant from the Elsevier Foundation to help female faculty balance career and family responsibilities. "Support is critical," Becerra said.
Alec Rosenberg is the health communications coordinator in the UC Office of the President's Integrated Communications group.