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“One learns one is not alone,” she remarked. “I learned so much fromthem—from how to think to how to write a grant proposal to how tolaugh at anxieties.”The PipelineWhile MESAAS has 16 tenured male professors, there is only one tenuredfemale professor—“an appalling number,” Busch called it.“Most of the professors are men, the senior people are men, so whatkind of model is that for women who are in our Ph.D. programs whoare often 50 percent of the class and every bit as capable?” she said.It’s a problem felt in all areas of higher education. A 2011 study byDeborah Kaminski and Cheryl Geisler reported that women whoremain in academia are promoted at rates comparable to men; thedisparity arises because so many women leave. The 2008 study ofchemistry students, conducted by the UK Resource Centre for Womenin “Science, Engineering, and Technology (SET),” pinpoints some ofthe reasons why women academics leave: they find the qualities ofacademic careers to be dissatisfying, they encounter a disproportionatenumber of barriers, and they have to make greater sacrifices than theirmale counterparts.Busch added: “The pipelines of the past have been so male-dominated;even in 1994 when I was working on my Ph.D., the pipeline hadn’t producedmany senior female scholars. It’s surprising that it’s not improvingas much as we would like that to happen.”Busch understands how this can play out for faculty and students.“I can definitely see how it can be a struggle for women to participate,”she said, citing evening meetings and out-of-town travel as potentialbarriers for academics who are mothers. “When you’re going up fortenure, visibility is a criteria, so how can a woman make sure she maintainsvisibility in the field without being able to attend the same numberof conferences or events?”Link back to contents page6 Superscript