Arizona Daily Wildcat

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Batty new rules

Spring Break 2011

Baseball gears up for the season by acclimating to new bat rules.

Mal Hawkins has three words for three weeks: Gym, tan, laundry. PERSPECTIVES, 4

SPORTS, 12

ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT Female faculty on the rise

thursday, february , 

tucson, arizona

dailywildcat.com

Tenure-track women remain in the minority, but numbers show the gap is shrinking

members because of the amount of time required for the job. “In general, I think it’s important what I have found in the past with women colleagues is … 40 hours a week doesn’t exist,” she said. “Being a junior faculty member is a day and night and weekend job. “And friends I’ve had who decided to start families have dropped out of the academic world because they can work 40 hours a week and make more money and have time to be with their families.” She said that women often choose to work in government labs, private companies or run their own business rather than academia. Kelsey Palmer, a civil engineering junior, said she doesn’t know any of her female classmates who plan to go into teaching. “I want to be an engineer for either the government or a private company.” The ones who choose to become faculty often have a strong support system. “A lot of these guys who work day and night (in academics) have someone who is at home buying groceries, fixing food,” Creath said. “The Ph.D. students have had their husbands who have supported their wives’ careers. They have done this because they know that their wife’s career will bring in more money or (be) more lucrative, so I’m seeing more non-traditional kinds of relationships that women are able to flourish within their professional careers.” Jennifer Barton, a biomedical engineering professor, agrees that having support at home is beneficial but that the lifestyle does not appeal to all women. “I have an extremely supportive husband who does more than his share of household work,” she said. “And I have long hours — there’s travel involved. It’s, by nature, a competitive field for grants, publications. And I think that, to some extent, that that type of lifestyle is not appealing to a lot of women. “The UA has looked at ways to ease that burden, but a certain part of that is inherent.” Barton found the UA to be very open to female faculty members. “I have great things to say. I’ve had an excellent experience here at the College of Engineering,” Barton said. “Both the dean and the previous dean really made it a priority to bring in female faculty, and the number of female faculty have really gone up drastically since I joined here.”

By Michelle A. Monroe ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT Tenure-track female faculty members remain in the minority in 11 of the 14 colleges at the UA. However, a review of data by the Arizona Daily Wildcat found that in the past 10 years there has been a rise in female faculty members on campus. In 1999, there were 402 female tenure-track faculty members, and in 2009 there were 508. Growth of female faculty in the more science-oriented fields continues to lag behind. The College of Engineering is second to last in female faculty members with 14, or 12 percent of the college’s faculty. But Mary Poulton, the college’s first female head of mining and geological engineering, said “there isn’t a bias in the hiring process.” “It’s just a symptom of the hiring pool available,” Poulton said, “and the college has really made great efforts during my career here to attract women to the faculty ranks as well as department head positions.” When asked to rate her overall experience as a female faculty member in the College of Engineering, she had only one word: “challenging.” “Parts of the job have been extremely positive and rewarding and other parts less so,” Poulton said. She would not comment on if she is treated equally and fairly with her male counterparts at the college. The college has almost doubled its number of female faculty members since 1999 from eight to 14 women. Katherine Creath, a research professor of optical sciences who is taking time off, said she believes that, while the numbers of female faculty are low, they are growing. “One thing I can say is that over the last 25 years, since I got my Ph.D., the situation has gotten so women are much more integrated in what’s been going on,” Creath said. “There is a dearth of women who can act as mentors, older women faculty members.” In 1999, there was only one woman out of the 25 faculty members in Creath’s college. In 2009, there were three out of 28 faculty members. The College of Optical Sciences has the lowest percentage of tenure-track female faculty members. “I didn’t seek help from other women in other departments at the university until probably the last 10 years,” Creath said. Creath believes women are not faculty

FACULTY, page 5

ASUA passes gun resolution Regents set to debate legislation, tuition, financial aid

alongs last week and felt that this view might not be shared amongst all students. “The university is a different place than the other side of Speedway, and I don’t see any place for handguns at the UA,” said Sen. Dominick San Angelo. San Angelo said the “Old West” mentality, with people brandishing arms, promotes a negative climate on campus. He said it was less a distraction issue and more of a safety issue on campus. “I think at this point it is up to us to take a stance as to what we think is in the best interest of students,” San Angelo said. If the bills in the Legislature were passed, Arizona would be the second state in the country to allow concealed carry on all campuses, the other being Utah. Eight states have banned weapons on college campuses. “There is hesitancy on my part because I do realize the kinds of issues that UAPD (University of Arizona Police Department) has to deal with, and it does make their job harder,” said Sen. Jeff Adams. Adams was the only senator to vote against the resolution. “It’s not the students job or the faculty’s job to worry about selfpreservation,” said Sen. Scott Rising, who led the charge to pen the resolution.

By Jazmine Woodberry ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT

By Luke Money ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT The next meeting of the Arizona Board of Regents will be held today and tomorrow in the Memorial Union on the Tempe campus of Arizona State University. Issues facing the board include a measure to permanently raise the maximum base tuition allowable to a median of regents-approved peer institutions. Currently that level is set at the bottom third of peer tuition rates, a level which the UA and ASU already exceed, and which Northern Arizona University is approaching. This proposal will not necessarily mandate increases in tuition. It says in the proposal that this measure “will facilitate the success of these alternative delivery methods by allowing the Board to set tuition for these programs with flexibility to lower tuition mid-cycle as needed.” The proposal would also allow universities to lower their tuition rates without approval from the board, though the board would still have to sign off on any proposed increases in base tuition. The UA will also seek approval

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from the board to approve university awards and grants worth more than $10.5 million. This figure includes proposals to help urge commercial development in solar energy, and various awards from the National Institute of Health and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

For more information on the issues that will be discussed at the regents’ meeting, you can view their agenda at www.azregents.edu A live stream of the meeting can be found beginning 9 a.m. at www.azregents.edu/aborlive/default.aspx8 “Approval of these awards is critical to the continuation and enhancement of UA’s national leadership role in conducting ground-breaking research and providing top-ranking educational programs,” the proposal reads. The board will also discuss various legislative items currently being debated, and may choose to take official stances on bills that would directly impact the Arizona university

system, specifically bills designated as “potentially detrimental to the university system.” Bills included in this category include four that would make it legal to carry concealed firearms on college or university campuses and a bill that would bar state funds from being used to subsidize tuition or fees for a student who has already earned at least one baccalaureate degree. The regents have not classified any proposed bills as those “that would help the university system” at this time. The regents will also vote on whether to permanently raise the cap on out-of-state student enrollment to 40 percent of a total university population. This would make permanent a temporary measure that was approved in 2009. The board will also discuss financial aid plans for the next two fiscal years. For the UA, this plan would entail increasing need-based financial aid by $4.3 million from 2010 to 2012, and merit-based aid by $1.5 million over the next two years. Aid for those students eligible for both need and merit-based financial aid would also increase under the proposal, from $15.2 million to $17.3 million.

ONLINE

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Visit DailyWildcat.com for live blog updates during the Arizona Board of Regents meeting, beginning at 9 a.m.

The ASUA Senate passed a resolution at its meeting on Wednesday night against four separate bills in the Arizona Legislature that would allow students and faculty to carry concealed weapons on campus and inhibit the university’s ability to prevent carry on campus. “We’re not going to have people running around shooting people,” said Robert Rosinski, an Associated Students of the University of Arizona senatorial candidate, student veteran and civil engineering sophomore at the UA. As the president and founder of an unofficial campus group, Students for the Second Amendment, he said he felt strongly about having the discussion about guns on campus, and that students would feel more comfortable around guns if they had more experience with the weapons. “People are more comfortable having the opportunity to decide their own fate,” Rosinski said. He also cited concealed carry laws throughout the country, specifically in Utah, where universities allow concealed carry. “If you want some research, look past Speedway,” Rosinski said. Sen. Taylor Bilby, along with many others, gathered student reaction through SafeRide ride-

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