Did the Unique Team Mentoring of CCOFFE Work? Evidence from 20 Years Later
Abstract
"In 1998 a group of 40 untenured female economists gathered for the first innovative team mentoring workshop, CCOFFE: Creating Career Opportunities for Female Economists. Over the three day NSF sponsored workshop, eight senior female economists advised teams of five junior economists on networking, publishing, grant writing, and work life balance. In order to assess the impact of this unique intervention on this group of women, a control group of 'Matched Pairs,' untenured male and female economists at similar point in their careers were also followed. One year after the intervention, Bartlett et al (1999) found that CCOFFE participants had significantly more articles accepted and published in referred journals, wrote more book chapters, and reports, and had significantly larger number of funded grants. However as Bartlett et al (1999) note, 'The test of the pudding is in the tenure process and whether these women have made up enough ground to be disproportionately awarded tenure in the coming years.'This research assesses the careers of participants and matched pairs 20 years after the original intervention and asks the question, 'Did CCOFFE participants achieve tenure, and full professor at a significantly higher rate than did the original matched pairs? Did it take any longer to earn those ranks? A difference in difference approach is used to study participant data on publications, grants received and career trajectories.
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