Women scientists and engineers use new information technologies to tackle isolation
Integrating new location-aware computer networks with old-fashioned human networks, researchers at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) have developed an innovative solution to the problem of isolation that faces women in the academic science and engineering workforce.
Nancy Steffen-Fluhr, PhD, director of NJIT’s Murray Center for Women in Technology states that “Women researchers have plenty of human capital – the ‘what-you-know’ component of career success – but, because they are isolated, it is much harder for them to accumulate social capital, the ‘who-you-know’ connections through which insider information flows.” This problem is addressed by seed-funding small cross-disciplinary communities within which women faculty can do collaborative research, with each other and with male peers, from a position of numerical strength. The researchers will then interconnect these communities using traditional face-to-face networking strategies in combination with 21st-century pervasive information technology. These P3 tools, which link people-to-people-to-geographical-places, are being developed as part of NJIT’s “Smart Campus” project.
To assess the effectiveness of the project’s strategy, Steffen-Fluhr and her colleagues will collect faculty data from the P3 study and other sources and use it to create a dynamic computer map showing changes in social network complexity over time.
