Successfully Navigating Your PhD: A Mentoring Workshop for 3rd Year + Women & Non-Binary PhD Students

Organizers: Amanda Agan, Vellore Arthi, Marianne Bitler, Rowena Gray, Erin Hengel, Elaine Hill, Bhagyashree Katare, Maya Rossin-Slater, Carolyn Sloane, Jenna Stearns, Lucy Xiaolu Wang, Sabrina Young
With Support from AEA-CSWEP

APPLICATIONS DUE: June 3, 2022

Purpose

In most economics and economics-adjacent PhD programs, students will have completed their coursework and chosen their fields by the completion of their second year. Then, students face the daunting and exciting task of conducting their own independent research, sometimes for the first time in their lives. Students can feel overwhelmed and lost at this juncture in their studies, and may not always have access to support and resources that can help them navigate graduate school successfully and make the most out of their PhD experience.

Women and non-binary students, who are substantially under-represented in the profession and face a variety of systemic barriers (Goldin, 2013; Bayer & Rouse, 2016; Hengel, 2017; Mengel et al., 2017; Sarsons, 2017; Wu, 2017; Bayer & Wilcox, 2019; Lundberg & Stearns, 2019; Lundberg, 2020; Doleac, Hengel & Pancotti, 2021; Dupas et al., 2021), may be at a particular disadvantage, and may lack women/non-binary peers, role models, or mentors in their own departments and networks. They may therefore miss out on valuable “hidden curriculum” information and feel unsupported. The goal of this workshop is to begin to address this need.

Details

The workshop will be modeled after earlier workshops of this kind, which targeted women and non-binary PhD students in economics and health policy. It is also inspired by the successful CeMENT workshop for female assistant professors in economics, which is hosted by the Committee for the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (CSWEP) and the American Economic Association (AEA).

Eligibility Criteria:

• Must be in 3rd or higher year of the PhD program as of fall 2022
• Identify as woman or non-binary
• In Economics Department or concentrating in Economics in other departments/schools (e.g. Public Policy, Health Policy)
• No restrictions on location (although be mindful that the workshop will take place via Zoom from approximately 9am to 3pm PT)
• Students from under-represented minority (URM) backgrounds are strongly encouraged to apply

Student participants will be organized into small groups based on research fields, and each group will be matched with 2 mentors. Mentors will be women/non-binary economists in various stages of their careers – assistant/associate/full professors in economics and other departments, as well as those employed outside academia (e.g., research think tanks, government positions, industry). The workshop will focus on a variety of issues, including generating research ideas, finding advisors, accessing data, collaboration and co-authorship, finding opportunities to present research and get feedback, grant writing, networking, mental health, and work-life balance.

To Apply

Please use this form to apply AND please send your CV and 1-page research proposal to info@cswep.org with the subject line: “Fall 2022 Mentoring Workshop Application”.

The research proposal should outline at least one research idea that you are planning to pursue, and include details about the research question, setting, theoretical model (if applicable), data and research design (if applicable). You will be asked to prepare a slightly longer research proposal in advance of the workshop, on which you will get feedback from your mentors and peers.

Applications are due June 3, 2022.

Admission to Workshop

We hope to be able to accommodate as many students as we can with this workshop. Our slots are limited by the number of mentor volunteers that we have. If demand for the workshop exceeds supply of slots, then slots will be randomly allocated among all applicants who meet the workshop eligibility criteria. Preference will be given to students who have not participated in this type of workshop in prior years.

Applicants will be notified about their admission status in summer 2022.