Prof. Wendy Williams, human development, and Prof. Stephen Ceci, the Helen L. Carr Professor of Developmental Psychology, have received a $1.4 million grant over four years from the National Institute of Health (NIH) to establish the Cornell Institute for Women in Science (CIWS). The grant will also fund a series of studies about gender bias and the underrepresentation of women in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

The CIWS, which will be headquartered in the Department of Human Development, will conduct basic experimental research, applied research and demographic/lifecourse synthetic studies. According to Williams, the CIWS will differ from organizations such as the Society for Women Engineers and Women in Science — it will focus on collecting and spreading the results of empirical research through a broad educational campaign rather than on outreach programs.

The research proposals by Williams and Ceci, funded by the NIH grant, exemplify this focus. Their research will consist of two national data collections and one laboratory study examining recruitment, mentorship and evaluation norms in STEM fields. Following these three studies, Williams and Ceci will conduct a national canvass of deans and provosts to get feedback on the practicality of recommendations arising from the studies. As part of the overall research plan, an educational campaign will then disseminate the research findings.

In a statement from their website, Williams and Ceci explained how the educational campaign will initiate topics of conversation “often not discussed openly or even acknowledged.”

Last March, President David Skorton acknowledged these gender disparities in his column in The Sun. He pointed out that while the gender ratio is roughly equal among Cornell’s undergraduate population as a whole, 30 percent of engineering undergraduates are women — higher, however, than the national average of 17 percent. Despite this underrepresentation, women do comprise a majority of the students in other programs. The College of Human Ecology is 75 percent female, the College of Veterinary Medicine is 77 percent female and the Weill Cornell Medical College is 53 percent female.

“In general, these data suggest that Cornell is doing a good and improving job in attracting female students,” Skorton wrote, “although the data also show us areas for further emphasis.”

In the STEM fields, women comprise only 19 percent of Cornell’s faculty. Women are vastly underrepresented in these fields nationwide, especially in math-intensive sciences.

Williams and Ceci plan to address statistics such as these in their research. According to a summary from their website, many women complete Ph.D. programs but fail to transition into tenure track academic positions. Williams and Ceci’s project, “Assessing and Reducing Gender Bias in STEM Recruitment, Mentorship and Evaluation,” will analyze how pre-doctoral students are trained in graduate school and evaluated when applying for their first tenure-track position.

“We seek to better understand and ultimately improve, norms of behavior that may consciously or unconsciously lead current professors to create gender-biased recruitment, mentorship, and evaluation environments,” Williams and Ceci wrote on their website.

Williams and Ceci will explore whether current training and mentorship lead to an “identity threat,” the notion that a person’s identity will be devalued in a particular context. They believe such “identity threat” may be the basis for low enrollment and retention of women in STEM fields. According to Samantha Bobra ‘13, an undergraduate engineering student, this “identity threat” is present even before the graduate level.

“I don’t think it’s so much that women who want to pursue [these fields] aren’t able to,” Bobra said. “The problem is definitely that so few women are interested. Liking math or computers just isn’t ‘cool’ when you’re a teenage girl, but it’s almost expected for guys.”

In addition to the issue of “identity threat,” Williams and Ceci will examine interactions between professors and their graduate students, analyzing whether students are trained and advised differently based on gender. Their research will also explore how gender and gender-related information affects the evaluations of applicants for assistant professorships.

According to Olivia Hentz ’13, a chemistry major, the interaction between instructors and their female students can have a key impact on whether those students pursue scientific fields. Hentz cites the encouragement of her high school chemistry teacher as one of the factors that pushed her towards a chemistry major. However, Hentz also pointed out that the professor-student relationship might be overemphasized.

“My lecture classes are really large. I could be [either] a boy or a girl, and [my professors] wouldn’t notice,” said Hentz.

Still, Hentz remains optimistic about the potential impact of the CIWS.

“I think if the information is out there, then people will be more willing to notice it and make changes,” Hentz said. “I think a lot of it has to do with that we haven’t gotten too far away from times where women couldn’t have jobs [in STEM fields] ... We kind of have to have the times catch up.”

As Williams stated in an e-mail, “there is no easy answer” about why women are underrepresented in STEM fields, but Williams and Ceci are hopeful that their research and the CIWS will shed light on these issues. The underrepresentation of women in STEM fields might come down to simple psychology, speculated Bobra. “Walking into a room and realizing you’re the only girl can be kind of intimidating,” she said.