Two faculty members from the
College of Arts & Sciences – Rachel Rinaldo, assistant professor of
sociology, and Kelsey Johnson, associate professor of
astronomy – and two from the
School of Engineering and Applied Science – Lisa Colosi Peterson, assistant professor of
civil and environmental engineering, and Petra Reinke, associate professor of
materials science and engineering
– are the first recipients of the fellowships, which will help them
strengthen research networks and collaborations and advance their
careers at critical junctions.
The program aims to support the representation and advancement of
women in academic science, technology, engineering and math – referred
to as “STEM” fields – and social, behavioral and economic science, or
SBE, careers.
“U.Va. ADVANCE’s transformational work will improve the University’s
capacity to recruit, compete for and advance top faculty talent. This
work seeks to engage everyone in attaining these goals,” said
Gertrude Fraser, the principal investigator for the ADVANCE grant. .
Fraser,
vice provost for faculty recruitment and retention and associate professor of
anthropology, leads a
team of faculty that runs the ADVANCE Program. Other team members include
Pamela Norris, associate dean of research and graduate programs and Frederick Tracy Morse Professor of
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering;
Joanne Cohoon, associate professor of science, technology and society
in the Engineering School; and Sophie Trawalter, assistant professor of
public policy and psychology.
The ADVANCE Enhancement Fellowships are being awarded twice a year, and the next deadline is Sept. 30. For information, click
here.
The four professors, at critical junctures in their mid-careers, will
be able to pursue specific career-enhancing activities with the
one-year fellowships, worth up to $5,000.
For an American sociologist, Rinaldo has an unusual area of study:
Indonesia. In researching gender, globalization and culture, she uses
ethnographic fieldwork in studying Muslim and secular women activists in
Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, to look at how Islam and feminism are not
as totally incompatible as they might seem.
“Gender and globalization is an emerging topic of interest among
sociologists, anthropologists and specialists in gender studies,” said
Rinaldo, who came to U.Va. in 2009. “Scholars in this field examine
subjects such as how the global economy or international institutions
are gendered; cross-border gender issues such as migration,
transnational feminism and women’s movements; and transnational
processes that are shaping gender and sexuality in various local and
regional contexts.”
Rinaldo, whose first book, “Mobilizing Piety: Islam and Feminism in
Indonesia,” was published this year, will use her grant to organize a
symposium bringing together gender and globalization scholars to discuss
emerging theoretical and empirical issues in this sub-field, as well as
spur new research and potential collaborations.
“I am also hoping that faculty and students from other departments
will participate, and that it will spur interdisciplinary discussion and
collaboration,” Rinaldo said.
Astronomer Johnson has a specific reason for wanting to re-establish
networks in her field: the associate professor took time off last year
when she had her third child, and is ready to renew her professional
activities full time. She will use her grant to attend an international
meeting of the National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics and
Electronics in Mexico City focusing on massive young star clusters.
The ADVANCE grant is important, she said, because “it will facilitate
my getting plugged back into my research community. ... I’m anxious to
get my new data into the research field.”
Johnson is excited to present her research from the Atacama Large
Millimeter/submillimeter Array, known as ALMA, an observatory in Chile.
She has observed the first known example of a short-lived stage of
extreme star formation that is believed to have an important role in the
early universe.
Reinke, the materials scientist, also will use her grant to support
travel: she plans to visit several universities and national
laboratories “to strengthen nascent collaborations and to present my
work with several research groups who are at the forefront of science in
my area of research,” she said.
At U.Va. for 10 years, Reinke defined her field briefly as “nano- and
surface science, or materials science at surfaces.” She researches
building blocks for nanotechnology and spintronics on very small
surfaces. Spintronics is “an emerging technology using the intrinsic
spin of the electron and its associated magnetic moment, in addition to
its fundamental electronic charge, in solid-state devices.”
Reinke hails from Germany, where she worked before coming to Virginia.
“Coming to the U.S. was a unique opportunity and allowed me to move
into a field of research which is truly interdisciplinary,” she said.
“However, while I have retained many contacts in Europe and therefore am
well-known internationally, my network in the U.S., both in terms of
collaborations and national recognition, is not as strong and diverse,
and needs to be developed in more depth to move my career to the next
level.”
Using her grant close to home, Peterson will enhance not only her
career but also those of graduate students. One of her goals over the
next phase of her career is helping get more women into the STEM
pipeline, as well as on her research team.
A member of the U.Va. civil and environmental engineering faculty for
five years, she realized that her research team would benefit from
having members at different stages of their education. She will offer a
fellowship to an incoming graduate student next summer.
“It is my hope that offering a student a prestigious paid research
position for the summer before she officially starts graduate school
will make my group more attractive to qualified candidates,” Peterson
said. “Also, by having the new student come in the summer, I can make
myself more available to work with him or her before classes begin.”
She plans to visit several local colleges this fall to meet qualified
applicants, encourage them to apply to the civil and environmental
engineering department for their master’s and doctoral degrees – and
invite them to consider working with her.
“I hope this approach will be successful and that I can build up
networks of contacts to draw from in subsequent years,” she said.
In addition to the Enhancement Fellowships, the U.Va ADVANCE program consists of four other
initiatives that
aim to improve departmental climate, document the experiences of senior
and retired women faculty, support search and selection and encourage
innovative approaches to addressing underutilization of women in STEM
and SBE academic careers.
