AAI Committee on the Status of Women: Mission & Organization

The mission of the Committee on the Status of Women (CSOW) is to generate and promote programs that assure equal treatment of all professional immunologists on the basis of merit. The CSOW focuses on enhancing career opportunities that advance the involvement and recognition of women immunologists in the scientific community. To this end, the CSOW maintains on our Web page a Potential Speakers and Chairs List that contains the names and research interests of women immunologists. The Speakers and Chairs List consists of an Alphabetical Listing of women immunologists as well as a Listing of Research Topics in which individuals are categorized by subspecialty. The criteria for adding new candidates to the Potential Speakers and Chairs List are that they be independent investigators who have an active publication record and are AAI members in good standing. We encourage immunologists and scientists in other disciplines to consult this resource when considering the selection of individuals to speak at meetings or seminar series, to participate on review panels, to serve on editorial boards and to otherwise participate in professional activities.

The committee is organized into two subcommittees described below.

1. Public Relations Subcommittee
a) A major objective if this subcommittee is to increase the visibility of women immunologists by continually updating our Potential Chair and Speakers List.

b) As part of our mission to monitor the status of women, we conduct various surveys. Surveys have been completed documenting the participation of women on editorial boards and as speakers at meetings. In addition the proportion of women graduate students versus women faculty has been evaluated. These surveys were published in the AAI newsletter under ImmunoNotes in the July 1999, October/November 2000 and August 2001 issues respectively.

c) An annual letter is sent to the female membership of the AAI updating them on the activities of the committee. In addition, we include a questionnaire asking if an individual would like to serve on an AAI committee. These names are forwarded to the chair of the Nominating Committee for the AAI and to the AAI president.

2. Symposium Subcommittee

This subcommittee is responsible for organizing the annual CSOW Symposium or Discussion. For the 2003 AAI meeting, the subcommittee organized a Careers Lunch, which was well attended and received. For details on the success of this discussion, see the ImmunoNotes in the Sept. 03 AAI newsletter. The subcommittee is organizing a Careers Discussion to take place at the FASEB meeting in 2004. For a list of past symposia, see the section of the website entitled Past Symposia.

All information and pages are copyrighted by The American Association of Immunologists, Inc.
Page updated: 03/09/2006