Stacy A. Wenzel, Ph.D. and UIC Women and Scientific Literacy Project Collaborators
University of Illinois at Chicago

We outline an action research project aimed at increasing women’s scientific literacy. This project is underway at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) as well as at nine other US colleges and universities as part of an innovative three-year national curriculum and faculty development project, Women and Scientific Literacy. The project is coordinated by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF). In this paper, we summarize the foundations of this project, its background and action agenda at the university level, initial accomplishments and findings, and recommendations for other CIC universities.

Foundations at the conceptual level

The foundations of this project rest both in scholarship on women and science and in advocacy efforts for improving higher education. They include scholarship on the status of women in science, feminist studies of science, and the previous experiences of the AAC&U as a change agent working collaboratively with higher education institutions.

Attention has focused closely on women in scientific professions during the last quarter century. The attention on increasing the number of women scientists in the 1970s and 1980s was spurred by both the women’s movement and a belief that a shortfall in educated scientists and engineers would threaten the economic strength of the United States. Today, attention focuses less on projected shortfalls and more on the justice of women’s inclusion in careers which hold promise for economic success and independence. In addition, there is an understanding of the need for all women and men to be science literate in order to deal with the challenges of life in the 21st century.

The Women and Scientific Literacy project aims to "make science more attractive to women by expanding the content and teaching methods of the science curriculum in higher education, both within traditional science departments and within humanities and social science course." The mechanism by which this goal will be sought is by including the scholarship on gender and science in science courses and including more science in women’s studies courses.

This project aims to develop faculty awareness of scholarship on science and gender and to integrate pedagogical and curricular changes reflecting this knowledge into both undergraduate science and women’s studies courses. In 1992, biologist and feminist scholar Anne Fausto-Sterling proposed the importance of "building two-way streets" between science and women’s studies. She contends that too few women’s studies programs require students to study science and have the necessary scientific literacy to deal with the increasingly technological world. In turn, too few science departments consider the large body of scholarship (some feminist, some of other perspectives) that teaches about science in its social, philosophical, and historical context.

Scholars who have examined current science education reform concur with Fausto-Sterling that scientific literacy needs to be undertaken in the broad and inclusive ways that include understanding the social context of science and that involve a more diverse community of scientists. For example, Margaret Eisenhart, Elizabeth Finkel, and Scott Marion (1996) consider AAAS’s Project 2061, NSTA’s Project on Scope, Sequence, and Coordination, and NRC’s National Science Education Standards. They find these K-12 school reform efforts to have broad visions of scientific literacy but narrow means of implementation. One route toward scientific literacy would be to expose children, especially girls, to science within the context of the world in which science is done. They cite important contributions of feminist scholars of science and note that considering studies "about science" will help in "improving the content of science education [and] will help to attract or retain more women or minorities" (Eisenhart, et al, 1996: 274).

Foundations at the national level

The AAC&U’s Program on the Status and Education of Women (PSEW) has taken a leadership role in moving into operation Fausto-Sterling’s vision of two-way streets between science and women’s studies. With a $857,224 grant from the National Science Foundation, AAC&U has begun a three year initiative on women and scientific literacy that aims to develop new courses, support faculty development, and facilitate institutional change to improve the science education of women.

In January 1997, AAC&U chose ten colleges and universities from a competitive group of 76 applicants to join the Women and Scientific Literacy Project. In addition to the University of Illinois at Chicago, these institutions include: University of Arizona, Barnard College, Bates College, California State University - Long Beach, Greenfield Community College, Portland State University, University of Rhode Island, Rowan College of New Jersey, and St. Lawrence University. Under the guidance of an advisory panel of the nation’s leading gender and science scholars, the ten participating institutional teams met together in February/March 1997 in Tempe, Arizona at a conference launching this collaborative project. Future meetings, contact with expert advisors, an Internet listserver, and other resources will be provided by AAC&U.

Women and Scientific Literacy is one of many collaborative projects coordinated by AAC&U aimed at addressing higher education in terms of gender and diversity. Founded in 1915, the AAC&U has worked to strengthen networks between administration and faculty leaders as they work on leadership and educational values; curricular purposes and involvement in learning; faculty and institutional development; diversity and educational excellence; and learning in the global community. The PSEW, founded in 1972, is one of only two women’s offices sponsored by a higher education association. It’s grant funded initiatives, conferences, publications, and newsletter provide a vital resource for colleges and universities working to address gender equity. AAC&U staff members Dr. Caryn McTighe Musil and Debra Humphreys direct the Women and Scientific Literacy national project.

Foundations at the university level

At the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), the time and circumstances are right to undertake this project to initiate and nurture sustainable movement towards curricula that integrate women’s studies and science scholarship. This project aims to develop faculty awareness of scholarship on science and gender and integrate pedagogical and curricular changes reflecting this knowledge into undergraduate science and women’s studies courses.

At the UIC, our Women and Scientific Literacy project focuses on undergraduate courses of particular relevance to the health professions: 100-level basic science courses (in particular, chemistry) that serve as required entry points for pre-professionals, introductory health science courses, and women’s studies courses that can incorporate scholarship on health and basic sciences. These targeted courses influence many UIC students in addition to those studying health professions. We link our project with the health sciences for a number of reasons. First, UIC has already demonstrated success in implementing curricular change at the graduate level in the health professions related to women’s health. Second, a recent analysis of UIC’s academic market position notes that the institution is one of only three universities in the nation that offers all six health career professions: pharmacy, dentistry, nursing, medicine, public health, and associated health professions (USA Group, 1996). A new undergraduate program that guarantees qualified students admission into graduate health professional programs attracts strong students to UIC. A focus on these health professions takes advantage of one of the university’s strengths. Third, a cooperative spirit exists between faculty within Women Studies and those within the health professions and sciences at UIC. This is exemplified by the founding in 1991 of the UIC Center for Research on Women and Gender--an interdisciplinary research center created by faculty in the humanities and social sciences as well as those in the health professions and sciences.

Curricular and pedagogical change has a higher chance of success if it is built on a foundation of past success and if it is part of a multi-tiered effort of reform that also includes attention to student access and campus climate. The University of Illinois at Chicago has worked over the past years to attract students to science fields and to promote retention. Currently, women comprise significant numbers of the undergraduate science students: 20% of those in engineering, 61% of those in the allied health professions, 64% of pharmacy students, and 87% of nursing students, for example. Many of these women science students are African Americans, Asians, and Latinas. Many come from the Chicago Public Schools. UIC’s student body is roughly one half ethnic minority students (DRIA, 1996: 32, 39, 57, 37). Because UIC’s science fields include many women of color, the University has vast potential to educate leaders for the health care community who reflect the ethnically diverse population of Chicago and the US.

Campus climate for women in science at UIC has been explored through a number of interactive conferences, including the 1992 Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) Conference on Women in Science and Engineering attended by a UIC team and the 1991 Conference on Changing Women/Changing Science sponsored by the UIC Center for Research on Women and Gender. Other individuals on campus have attended conferences focused on women and science that have been sponsored by groups like the Women in Engineering Programs and Advocates Network (WEPAN). The action plans developed at these conferences have sparked a number of programs at UIC, including initiatives that match women engineering and science students with mentors, work with teaching assistants in engineering to increase their awareness of gender inequity, and offer an internet list serve discussion group called WISENET that facilitates the connection of isolated women scientists around the country.

Compared to access and climate, curricular and pedagogical reform are more challenging issues for any campus to undertake. Some say that getting faculty to change curriculum or pedagogy is like trying to herd cats--not an easy task. Yet curricular and pedagogical changes have begun at UIC. In 1993- 1995, the UIC Center for Research on Women and Gender sponsored a series of national meetings on health professions curricula and the need for "reframing women’s health" in the curricula. The UIC Council for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) offers support for teaching in all fields. CETL’s efforts include sponsorship of faculty forums on teaching issues, teaching assistant training, and curriculum and instructional grants. Several new undergraduate courses have directly addressed the connection between women and science, including ‘Women’s Bodies, Women’s Lives: A Social History of Medicine’ and ‘Women and Science.’ Curriculum transformation related to women and science is most pronounced in the graduate levels of the health professions where women’s health perspectives have been integrated into traditional courses and utilized to create new courses and programs. For example, the University offers a graduate level women’s health concentration through the College of Nursing. The Women’s Studies Program also offers a graduate concentration including courses on theories and methodologies. Learning from UIC’s curricular successes at the graduate levels, the reform of the undergraduate curriculum can build on (and strengthen) a foundation of demonstrated faculty interest in the interaction of women and science. The success of women’s health scholarship and teaching at UIC today provides a solid foundation for the curricular innovation that we propose.

Action agenda at the university level

The UIC Women and Scientific Literacy team is composed of faculty who together create a web of linkages between health scientists, basic scientists, and social scientists. Original team members included: Alice Dan, PhD. Professor, College of Nursing and Director, Center for Research on Women & Gender; Stephanie Riger, PhD Director & Professor, Women’s Studies Program and Professor, Department of Psychology; Katrin Schultheiss, PhD Visiting Assistant Professor, Women’s Studies Program and Visiting Assistant Professor, History Department; Rosalie Sagraves, PharmD Professor, College of Pharmacy and Dean, College of Pharmacy; Saundra Theis, PhD Associate Professor, College of Nursing and Associate Dean for Academic Programs; Donald Wink, PhD Assoc. Professor, Chemistry Department and Chair, Council for Excellence in Teaching & Learning. Dr. Dan serves as chairperson of the UIC team. At the Center for Research on Women and Gender, Dr. Stacy Wenzel (whose research focuses on women and science) serves as on-campus coordinator to the project with the assistance of staff member Veronica Arreola (B.S. Biology / Women Studies). The project team includes administrators and faculty already intensely involved in curriculum and faculty development. Other individuals at UIC have since become involved with the project, including Dr. Sharon Fetzer (Visiting Assistant Professor, Chemistry) and Dr. Cindy Angerhofer (Assistant Professor, Pharmacy) who became core members almost immediately after the project began. The additional collaboration with other individuals will be discussed in the "Progress to date" section.

The 1997-1999 key action components of this project were developed collaboratively by team members and include faculty development, listening to students, developing science components in women’s studies courses, supporting other curricular revisions, teaching assistant training and efforts to institutionalize support for women and scientific literacy. In February/March 1997, a team of University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) faculty joined teams from 9 other colleges and universities in Tempe AZ for the first meeting of participants in a three-year national curriculum and faculty development project. From this conference and on-campus meetings, the goals of this projects have been further developed. A few examples follow.

The keystone piece of our project is Faculty Development. This project has three goals and pieces to it. The first goal and piece is self-education. This encompasses a monthly seminar where team members will meet to discuss a paper whose topic is related to the AAC&U project. Topics we have considered are: "How gender influences chemistry and other natural sciences", "The field of women's health", and " The 'science wars' between social science critics of science and scientists." Through these monthly seminars we also plan to widen the group by announcing topics and meeting times to faculty at UIC. This will help to locate interested faculty in underrepresented colleges and departments and draw them into the project. Faculty learn in many ways other than attending faculty development workshops. We aim to spread an understanding of women and science literacy via informal networks and non-threatening gatherings of colleagues. The third part of Faculty Development is to, at minimum, gather information and supplies related to training faculty about gender equity and/or science teaching. This information would be an important resource for faculty development programs this group or UIC would create.

Focus groups and women’s studies courses are now currently under revision. Nursing and pharmacy students will be invited to participate in focus groups we will conduct in the summer and fall of 1997. Do nurses see themselves as scientists? And if they do not, how does that affect their expectation of their required science courses? To better understand the experiences and expectations of nursing and pharmacy students is just one goal of this summer's focus groups. We will also provide feedback to not only the Nursing and Pharmacy Colleges, but also to departments such as Chemistry, Biology, and Physics. The focus groups should yield information vital to any present or future revisions taking place in either the appropriate colleges or departments. the focus groups should also provide information that can not normally be attained from regular evaluation sheets. The Women's Studies part of the UIC AAC&U project is two fold. The first major part is the revision of Women's Studies 101 for the spring semester in 1998. The second major part is the establishment of a permanent women and science course.

Through the collaboration of the project team and AAC&U advisor Dr. Joan Poliner Shipiro, a plan to assess the success of this project will be established. Project participants from UIC’s Center for Research on Women and Gender, Dr. Dan and Dr. Wenzel, will coordinate assessment efforts on site. Formative evaluation will be utilized to shape the project while summative evaluation will allow the project to serve as model to other efforts.

Project outcomes may be documented in a number of ways. Course syllabi and exams may be analyzed. Student course evaluations, student focus groups, faculty interviews, faculty surveys, observation or videotaping of classrooms are all possible means of examining the success of this project. The main goals of this project are: (1) greater faculty familiarity with the new scholarship on gender and science, (2) more gender inclusive pedagogy in science-related classrooms, (3) the inclusion of women and women-centered scholarship within the content of the science courses, (4) the inclusion of science related topics in the women’s studies courses, and (5) greater communication between health professions, science, and women’s studies faculty at UIC.

Progress to date at the university level

At this time, it is too early to know much about project outcomes. However, we can document growing numbers of faculty and staff members working on and interested in this project. The team of faculty began with representation from nursing, chemistry, pharmacy, and women’s studies. Currently, our project meetings have drawn many other important resource people at the UIC including additional faculty and staff members from the initially included departments and additional programs like research support, the graduate school, and engineering. The team includes members who hold various positions: dean, associate dean, assistant dean, tenured faculty, non-tenure track faculty, academic professional, department chair, research center director, teaching and learning center director, coordinator of teaching assistant training, coordinator of faculty workshops, director of funded project to redesign laboratory curriculum.

While we began with an understanding of how the project could partner and support efforts like chemistry lab revision, we have now expanded our role in developing relationships with staff responsible for university wide faculty development programs, multi-university science teacher education initiatives, and student organized career exploration courses.

Developing stronger networks involves presentations made to groups like the one made at the CICWISE conference described in these proceedings. In addition to the presentation about our project made at this meeting, we have also presented to the UIC Campus Forum and will present a paper at the 1997 International Conference on the Public Understanding of Science and Technology. Increasing awareness of gender equity in the sciences is one accomplishment of this project to date.

UIC faculty members active in this project have noted that they have found their experiences compelling. The following comments are a sample of their thoughts that begin to reflect the kind of faculty development and discussion we hope continues to occur in this project. One science faculty member noted that she will pay close attention to the following as she works on the science course revision projects: "How do we ask questions as scientists? What questions do we ask as scientists." Yet while she valued the insights she gained at the AAC&U conference, she was left with the dilemma of "how to say this stuff to people who work in the her science department at UIC." She concluded that she "strongly objects to the word feminist" because the "walls" go up if she would use this term with some people. She likes the term humanist instead. If her colleagues hear feminism they "won’t hear a word after that." One women’s studies faculty member who is not herself a scientist noted that this was "one of the most energized conferences I’ve ever been to." In regard to using the term feminism, she noted that we need to make sure in publications we acknowledge the feminist scholars who contribute to the foundations of this project. Yet when talking to colleagues resistant to feminism we "don’t need to hammer people over the head with the word feminism if it is counter productive." Another faculty member remarked that she "really was energized" by the conference. The attendees at the meeting were a "completely different group than I usually associate with." She noted that she is not a women’s studies person though not opposed to it. She is interested in pedagogy. She found the feminist pedagogy discussed in AZ to be "excellent ways of teaching." She described it as not just women friendly, but "people friendly." One science faculty member found the meeting of scientists and women’s studies scholars a "cross cultural conversation." In her lecture on the day she returned from the conference, she actually changed her lecture to reflect ideas from the conference. She was conducting a lecture about oral contraceptives and commented to the class that they need to think critically about research in this area as the discussion on oral contraceptives is politically charged. Even very scholarly works may be colored by who writes the article and conducts the research. She remarked that she did not think her message fell on deaf ears.

As the Women and Scientific Literacy project progresses we will continue to evaluate the engagement of UIC faculty in the project via the numbers of them involved, the strength and breadth of the networks they build, and how their ideas about teaching and learning science change and develop.

Recommendations for CIC universities

Based on our experiences in these first stages of this innovative Women and Scientific Literacy project, we make the following recommendations to other universities.

• Work to increase the scientific literacy of all women in addition to improving recruitment and retention of women scientists. Collaborative efforts with women’s studies and other social science, humanities, and arts departments are a means to working toward this goal.

• A key to changing the experiences of women students’ experiences in the sciences rests with the faculty. Faculty need opportunities to develop their understanding of gender equity and science curriculum and pedagogy. Non-threatening, faculty-coordinated, long-term sustained, leader-supported, and institutionally-rewarded activities are needed to facilitate this goal.

• Examine the influence of pedagogy and curricular content on how women and men learn science, mathematics, and engineering.

• Read feminist and other scholarship on the sociology, history, and philosophy of science. This can provide a means to critically examining the underlying assumptions of science pedagogy and curricular content.

• Build and strengthen interdepartmental and multi-campus networks of faculty. Interdisciplinary dialogue can provide faculty with the fodder for new conceptualizations of how and what to teach in science in order to reach an increasingly diverse group of students.

• Move from externally funded initiatives to integrated institutionally supported efforts. Increasing attention to strong institutional commitment is a condition in many funding decisions. Long-term sustainable change toward gender equitable science education in colleges and universities is the desired goal.

References

Data Resources and Institutional Analysis. (February 1996). UIC Student Data Book, 1991-1995. Chicago: University of Illinois at Chicago.

Eisenhart, M., Finkel, E., and Marion, S.F. (Summer 1996). Creating the conditions for scientific literacy: A re-examination. American Educational Research Journal, 33(2), 261-295.

Fausto-Sterling, A. (Fall 1992). Building two-way streets: The case of feminism and science. NWSA Journal, 4(3); 336-349.

USA Group Noel Levitz. (March 1996). The University of Illinois at Chicago Academic Market Position Analysis. Unpublished report.