Brown named associate dean

In response to the Women's Initiative last fall, the School of Medicine has named Dr. Ann Brown, assistant professor of medicine and obstetrics and gynecology, as its first associate dean for women in medicine and science. As associate dean, Brown will work with women in the basic and clinical sciences to identify and improve aspects of the Medical School that make the environment challenging for women faculty.

"The position was created as part of ongoing attempts to make the School of Medicine a better, more responsive workplace for women faculty members," Vice Dean of Research Dr. Ross McKinney said.

Brown has cultivated an interest in working on behalf of women in medicine and science since she arrived at Duke in 1993. After accepting the post as associate dean, she also agreed to assume the chair of the dean's advisory committee on women, which was reinvigorated a year ago by School of Medicine Dean Dr. Sandy Williams at the urging of professor and chief of hematology Dr. Marilyn Telen. Additionally, she will continue to work as a member of the President's Commission on the Status of Women.

"Dr. Brown was a natural for this position, given her background and interest," McKinney said.

Admittedly, Director of the Women's Center and chair of the President's Commission on the Status of Women Donna Lisker said that historically, men have had longer access to medical training and have had a smoother path to the top than women.

McKinney said it was less than 30 years ago when female medical students first began to equal the number of male students.

"Women began to enter the U.S. medical student pool in large numbers around the time I was in medical school--the late 1970s," he said, also suggesting that this may be why there are fewer women in top professor positions today. "One element is the lack of women in senior ranks has to do with what might be called "a wave effect"--and the wave is just arriving."

If there is such a wave of senior-level women academics, it is slow in coming, Brown said. While women now make up 50 percent of medical and graduate students and post doctorates, only 10 to 13 percent of women in science and medicine are full professors.

"You'd think, 'Well, gee, if we wait long enough, we'll have enough women as men professors,'" Brown said. "But the fact is that [the pool of women professors] is not growing fast enough."

In trying to understand the reason why such inequality in the workplace exists, Brown said she will also be looking at aspects of the medicine and science climate that may serve as barriers to women's professional upward mobility.

One such barrier Brown has already identified is the system of mentoring. The fact that there are relatively few senior women faculty role models means the increasingly diverse group of currently entering these fields are having difficulty finding mentor-junior faculty pairs that are not "mismatches and misfires," Brown said.

"The traditional system of mentoring doesn't work as well as it should...," McKinney said. "We get great young faculty, we have tremendous resources, and we should be able to do more to help those faulty accomplish the steps necessary to be promoted and eventually tenured."

As associate dean, Brown hopes to address these issues as well as to continue to learn and understand what people's experiences are in the medical center. "Duke is a very exciting place to be and like any place, there are things in the system that make it difficult for us at some time or another.... I want Duke to support well-rounded, diverse human beings as they become leaders in academic medicine and science."