National Postdoctoral Association

Potential Interventions to Aid in Retaining Postdoc Women

A clearinghouse of promising practices

The purpose of this clearinghouse is to provide institutions with a summary of promising institutional practices that could aid in the retention of postdoc women in the academic career pipeline. The clearinghouse includes references to exemplary models from the community that could be adapted. Interventions in the clearinghouse are organized around a series of issues identified that could cause postdoc women to leave this pipeline.

The interventions are grouped into policy-oriented changes, where a centralized policy, rule, or guideline could enact a broad change in the work environment for postdocs, and programmatic changes, where a program or activity could provide direct benefit to postdocs or those who support postdocs. For most of these interventions, we spotlight some exemplary practices from the community that could be readily translated to other institutions or venues. In some cases, these are models that may target graduate students or junior faculty but could be adapted to serve postdocs.

Some of these examples result from research conducted by NPA ADVANCE in December 2009 via a survey of institutional representatives associated with NSF ADVANCE programs (past and present) as well as institutional representatives that have some responsibility for postdoctoral affairs.

The clearinghouse will continue to evolve and expand, so if you have suggestions or additions, please contact us!

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0819994. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.