The Climate at UW-Madison: Begins Sunny and Warm, Ends Chilly

Abstract

The following is a summary of the results of semi-structured interviews with nine female faculty members who left the UW-Madison and seven faculty members presently employed at the UW. The interviews were conducted on behalf of the Women in Science and Engineering Leadership Institute (WISELI), an initiative funded by the National Science Foundation that seeks to increase the number of women as faculty and as leaders on the UW-Madison campus. To achieve this goal, WISELI staff and the leadership team envisioned the campus as a living laboratory to promote gender equity for women in science and engineering by conducting "issue studies," carrying out dynamic research and evaluation, and continuing and developing campus initiatives and programs. The following documents the third and final issue study funded by this grant. Initially, sixteen interviews were conducted and the data were collected for two separate studies and purposes: 1) to identify the factors that influenced women faculty in science and engineering to leave the UW-Madison and, 2) to explore dual-career hiring experiences of university employees. It was only after the interview data from both studies were analyzed that we began to see how many of the findings were actually related. The executive summary explains the interrelated nature of these studies; the technical report explains the methodology and results for each study separately.