versities to participate in a series of career development panels, and to work cooperatively on each other’s projects as teams.

While many junior women appreciated the opportunities offered through CCOFFE, it was difficult to evaluate its effects since the mentees were handpicked from top universities. To address the evaluation issue, CSWEP initiated a new national mentoring program in 2004 with the support of the National Science Foundation and the American Economic Association. The program is called CeMENT, which stands for CSWEP Mentoring Program. What differentiates this new mentoring program from its predecessor (CCOFFE) and many others is the random assignment of applicants into treatment and control groups in each cohort, thus creating a panel of randomized controlled trials. Starting in 2004, every other year, more than 80 female assistant professors in economics have applied to the program. Each cohort of applicants is divided into groups by research area, and then randomly assigned to treatment or control status within each group. A treatment group typically comprises of 4–5 mentees and 1–2 mentors who are senior women in that field. Random assignment enables researchers as well as funding agencies to evaluate the effectiveness of the mentoring program.

The treatment. Junior women randomized into the treatment participate in a two-day workshop in conjunction with the American Economic Association annual meetings. Prior to the workshop, participants circulate working papers within their group. During the workshop, each group meets and discusses the working papers. Each cohort also participates in a series of panel discussions on important career-de-velopment topics, such as publishing, networking, earning tenure, grant application, teaching, and work-life balance. The two-day face-to-face meeting creates opportunities for junior women to become familiar with each other’s research and exposes them to senior female mentors and role models in their field.

After the two-day workshop, men-
toring groups typically stay connected
by sending each other monthly email
updates and meeting at profession-
al conferences. Activity levels vary
across groups. Members of success-
ful groups read and comment on each
other’s working papers, grant propos-
als, and tenure statements, organize
joint sessions at conferences, and
host each other as seminar speakers
at their institutions. Based on my own
experience, first as a mentee in CCOF-
FE and then as a mentor in CeMENT,
these groups communicate by email
at least once a month to update each
other on research progress, tasks
accomplished in the past month,
and goals for the following month.
Members often seek and give advice.
Monthly updates create both peer
pressure and opportunities for direct
or generalized reciprocity.
Communication and mentoring
can become more intense around
professional events like submission
of a paper or grant application (when
group members read and comment
on the work), submission of the tenure
dossier (when group members offer
feedback and help to strategize), when
individuals receive competing offers
from other institutions (when group
members help the individual identify
the trade-offs involved in moving), or
even life events like the birth of a child.
Monthly email messages typically
stop when all members of a group re-
ceive tenure, although most group
members continue to interact and help
each other professionally after their
mentoring group dissolves.
Interim results. Using data from
the first three cohorts (2004, 2006,
and 2008), researchers find significant
Random assignments
enables researchers
as well as
funding agencies
to evaluate
the effectiveness
of the mentoring
program.
Calendar
of Events

December 3–4

VRCAI ‘16: The 15th International Conference on Virtual-Reality Continuum and its Applications in Industry, Zhuhai, China, Sponsored: ACM/SIG, Email: [e-mail]

December 11–14

WSC ‘16: Winter Simulation Conference, Arlington, VA, Contact: Todd Huschka, Email: huschka.todd@mayo. edu

December 12–15

CoNEX T ‘16: The 12th International Conference on emerging Networking EXperiments and Technologies, Irvine, CA, Sponsored: ACM/SIG, Contact: Athina Markopoulou, Email: amarko@ stanfordalumni.org

December 12–16

Middleware ‘16: 17th International Middleware Conference, Trento, Italy, Sponsored: ACM/SIG, Contact: Gian Pietro Picco, Email: [e-mail]

January 2017

January 12–15

FOGA ‘17: Foundations of Genetic Algorithms XI, V Copenhagen, Denmark, Sponsored: ACM/SIG, Contact: Carsten Witt, Email: [e-mail]

February

February 4–8

PPoPP ‘17: 21st ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming, Austin, TX, Sponsored: ACM/SIG, Contact: Vivek Sarkar Email: [e-mail]