COACh Career Development Workshops for Science and Engineering Faculty: Views of the Career Impact on Women Chemists and Chemical Engineers

For the field of chemistry to play a leading role in the science and technology sector of the U.S. economy it must recruit and retain the best and brightest talent from all segments of our society. Currently in the United States there is a significant disparity in the recruitment and retention of women relative to their male counterparts, particularly at advanced-degree levels. For the past eight years the Committee on the Advancement of Women Chemists (COACh) has been offering professional development workshops on negotiation and communication skills for women faculty in the chemical sciences. The workshops are a combination of professional-skills training, experiential learning, role-playing, and group problem solving. To date, over 400 women chemistry faculty have attended these workshops held prior to national professional meetings for chemists. This article examines the participants' perceptions of the impact of the workshops on their careers. The results show that the overwhelming majority of the women report that the skills learned at the COACh workshops have enhanced their career progress in important and long-lasting ways. (Contains 6 tables and 2 notes.)