CRA-W is offering tracks for graduate students, early professionals and mid-career academics. These sessions are open to all attendees and do not require separate registration. For undergraduates, CRA-W will host tables in the Student Opportunity Lab where students can learn about graduate school and the application process.
Thriving in Graduate School: Sessions for Graduate Students
Graduate School Survival Skills
This session will address strategies for surviving and, in fact, thriving in graduate school and developing the necessary knowledge, experience and skills for a successful career. Topics covered will include setting realistic goals and expectations, advisor and mentor selection, tracking and maintaining your research and academic process, and the differences between getting a M.S. and Ph.D degree. Speakers will also discuss strategies for maintaining balance and a positive perspective in your life during graduate school, decision-making strategies when career and family priorities seem to collide, and how to handle uncomfortable situations that may arise.
Note that late stage graduate students may wish to attend the “Finding Your Dream Job” session in the Early Career traffic.
Jamika D. Burge, Senior Scientist, Information Systems Worldwide/DARPA
Rachel Pottinger, Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of British Columbia
Building Your Professional Persona
This session will address the dos and don’ts of building a professional image. Topics will include web presence (personal pages and social media), dissemination of technical contributions, and professional ethics. You will learn strategies for publishing your first and subsequent research papers and ethical concerns of publishing such as plagiarism, dual submissions, and author ordering. Speakers will also discuss how to manage your web presence so that online search results reflect your desired professional persona.
Patty Lopez, Platform Applications Engineer, Intel
Jaime Teevan, Senior Researcher, Microsoft
Building Your Professional Network
Many people find their jobs through their professional network. This session will help you find a community, meet people in the field, and promote yourself. You will learn how to present your ideas in a concise and appealing way to the people you meet. You will gain skill in making technical and business connections with others, and leveraging them for success in graduate school and your later career.
Elizabeth Bautista, Group Lead, Operations Technology Group, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
Raquell M Holmes, Founder and Director, improvscience
Building a Successful Career (Early Career)
Finding Your Dream Job:
Curious about the range of post-Ph.D. career options including academia and industry? Looking for some practical advice on how to apply for jobs, interview, and negotiate a job offer? This session is aimed at late stage graduate students and post-docs. Early Career speakers who have completed successful job searches and are now working in a range of jobs will talk about their experiences and answer your questions.
Jaeyeon Jung, Researcher, Microsoft
Lana Yarosh, Assistant Professor, Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota
Starting, Managing, and Growing Your Own Research Program
Whether you are in academia or a research lab, growing your research program means tapping into resources that help you be more successful. Funding can enable you to attract more students, or work on larger projects. Collaboration enables you to work with people outside your area of expertise, initiate new projects, and have a lot of fun. With representatives from both academia and research labs, this session will cover strategies for identifying the resources that are available to you and how best to take advantage of them. Speakers will also discuss strategies for managing student researchers/interns, support personal as well as “managing up” in your interactions with managers, chairs and deans.
Gillian Hayes, Associate Professor, Department of Informatics, Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences, UC Irvine
Susan Rodger, Professor of the Practice in the Computer Science Department, Duke University
Preparing for promotion
Do you know what steps you need to take to prepare for your next promotion? Whether this is preparing a tenure case, climbing the technical ladder, or stepping into a management role, this session will teach you what you can be doing now to prepare yourself for that next big promotion.
Julia Hirschberg, Professor and Chair of Computer Science, Columbia University
Dilma Da Silva, Principal Engineer and Manager, Qualcomm Research Silicon Valley
Advanced Career Mentoring Workshop
These sessions are designed for women in academia or research labs who are at the associate professor level or more senior, or equivalent at industry and government research labs. We recommend attending all three sessions as discussions will continue throughout the afternoon and culminate in the topic discussions in the final session.
Successful Leadership:
Leadership is a critical part of success in academia and research labs. In an interactive format, this session will focus on leadership development for those with the rank of associate professor and higher (or equivalent at research labs). Topics covered will include tips for being a successful leader, lessons learned from leadership failures, challenges women in particular face in being successful leaders, ways of influencing department culture even if you are one of few senior women in the organization, and how to find a mentor to help you develop as a leader.
Managing Up
Managing the people above you in your department or research lab to achieve your goals can take careful strategy. We will discuss a range of topics related to your interactions with senior leaders in your organization including how to get a better understanding of high level politics in your college or lab, methods for managing senior colleagues who are not on your side, ways to deal with leaders who are weak or problematic and strategies for changing the culture of your department without becoming department head. Bring your experiences and questions for the discussion.
Senior Career Mentoring Topic Tables
This session will consist entirely of interactive discussion tables with topics drawn from attendees and the topics of interest that emerge from the first two sessions of the workshop. We will have a number of seed topics if necessary including: “Do you want to be Dean?”, “Do I need to win awards?”,”Do I need to go to a new institution to advance?”, “When is it time to retire”?
Facilitators
Deb Agarwal, Head of Advanced Computing for Science Department, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
Nancy Amato, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, Texas A & M
Tracy Camp, Professor of Computer Science, Colorado School of Mines
Kathryn McKinley, Principal Researcher, Microsoft
Lori Pollock, Professor, Computer and Information Sciences, University of Delaware
Susan Rodger, Professor of the Practice in the Computer Science Department, Duke University
ABOUT
In addition to increasing the number of women involved, CRA-W also seeks to increase the degree of success women experience and to provide a forum for addressing problems that often fall disproportionately within women’s domain. CRA-W is hopeful that the committee activities will also have a positive impact for other underrepresented groups in CSE and is committed to improving the working environment for Computer Scientists and Engineers of both genders.
The Computing Research Association Committee on Women in Computing (CRA-W) is sponsoring these sessions.