I was recently tenured in the Department of Media & Cinema Studies and am honored to be included here as a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study and an Emerging Leaders Fellow. I would like to thank some of the large number of people who have worked in the care of my children during my pre-tenure years, without whom I would not have been able to conduct my academic work:

During this period of COVID, I have become all the more aware of the care, work, and infrastructure necessary so that I can do my academic work.

The care crisis this year is real and ongoing with schools closed or hours heavily reduced and remote, limited assistance from social networks outside single-family homes, and the cost and work of childcare offloaded to individual families. Those with young children, single parents, and people sandwiched between care for children and older adults have been especially burdened. Care work already falls especially heavily on women, particularly pre-

Dan Gilbert

Judy Ciafone

Russ Ciafone

Chris Wilson

Carmen Gewirth

Magaly Ávila

Victoria Mendoza

Erika Lopez

Teoko Pearson

Jacki Flemmings

Kelsey Kuhlman

Meng-Jue Wu

Patrick Ahasic

Nilam Swayampati

Lisa Pannbacker

Katie Pannbacker

Kathy Harshbarger

Ghada Abdalla

Meenu Sharma

Cindy Stark

Jennifer Robert

Katrina Smith

Allison Kittler

Brent McBride

Lynn Bell

tenure and non-tenure track mothers of young children, graduate teacher and researcher parents, first generation scholars and women of color who have heavier loads of social reproductive labor, fewer financial resources to pay for others to take it on, and often greater service and teaching work in their departments and university communities.1 The result is a campus where less than 30% of full professors are women, and a tiny fraction of that are women of color. The lack of support for care work is a critical issue of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The care crisis is acute during COVID, but it will be with us long after the pandemic because it is systemic; we do not have enough time or support for both care work and our academic work. Now would be an apt time for us to propose course releases or retroactive care leaves for faculty caregivers to make up for the deficits in support during COVID, as well as affordable, accessible childcare and care leaves for all workers on campus, so that they, just like faculty, can maintain working lives and the lives of others. And beyond our workplace, with a recognition of our interdependence with care workers, and our privileged position as women faculty, we can articulate calls for universal childcare, universal eldercare, federal paid leave for care, public social insurance for long-term care, and universal basic services so that everyone can get and provide care—as we need it, now, and in the future.

1 “COVID-19 Has Robbed Faculty Parents of Time for Research,” Chronicle of Higher Education, January 25, 2021 https://www.chronicle.com/article/covid-19-has-robbed-faculty-parents-of-time-for-research-especially-mothers?cid2=gen_login_refresh&cid=gen_sign_in; “COVID-19 and Beyond: Solutions for Academic Mothers,” Inside Higher Ed, March 11, 2021 https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/03/11/covid-19-and-beyond-solutions-academic-mothers

Being a tenured professor has always been my dream and my aspiration. I love being able to do research to solve problems and also to have a platform to share my knowledge and to influence the future generation. And I think being a faculty allowed me to do just that. It also gives me stability and security while giving me the autonomy to be creative and to take risks. Being a tenured faculty is quite liberating. It gives me more latitude to have a more balanced life. And so these perks have been my motivation in working for my tenure so that despite the many challenges, I was very determined to persevere and to succeed.

Hello, I am Liv Davila, an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Policy, Organization and Leadership in the College of Education. It's a pleasure to be with you.

My research looks at the experiences of multilingual, immigrant and refugee background, youth and their families. And in addition to more recently looking at more community based settings where and how they play a role in supporting immigrant and refugee learners, particularly during the time of COVID.

I came at this research in multiple ways we can say. I, from a very, very young age, really began to fixate on language and sounds. Maybe it's because I have very poor eyesight and I really relied on my hearing to negotiate spaces. And so this very core kind of tendency of mine I took, it's been with me for a long, long time and I think that I began to think and to intellectualize this actually probably during one of my very first summer jobs in high school when I worked on an assembly line in for Green Giant in Minnesota, alongside of migrant seasonal migrant workers from Mexico. And though I didn't speak Spanish—I'd never taken Spanish as a class—I absorbed and I picked up and I even, just from a distance, began to think more critically about language, the role of language, and maintaining and fostering community.

And of course, we know that language is also very divisive. It serves to divide and can be used against others. And so I continue this line of thinking and line of thoughts in relation to language and race, and language and migration status, immigration status, rote language in relation to gender. And this work, I again began to continue to intellectualize through college experiences, college studies, and to work experiences after college, primarily in the

areas of Brooklyn homeless shelter and other community-based organizations, pro-bono legal aid. But the language has always been at the core of how I understand the world. And so, beyond this, you know, I was one of those who said that I didn't want to be a teacher. And yet somehow I came into teaching, and it just, it was so natural. And I learned that either someone who's the continuous learner and the teaching gave back in so many ways to me. I learned so much from my students. So I taught in a community college settings and K-12 settings and in university settings. And really keeping an emphasis of our teaching language, a foreign language or world language. French as a world language and English as a new language. So really again, it was those formative experiences for my young age that brought me to where I am now.

I've been asked to comment a little bit on mentoring and what it's meant for me, and I can't say enough what it's meant to me to learn and grow with, particularly with peers who are maybe a few years ahead of me, maybe the same stage that I'm at. And to learn from their mentorship, their guidance, their honesty their reflexivity, and scholars doing work that's similar to mine, but really pushes many boundaries that I don't explore in my work. I've also really drawn from colleagues who are not in my field of study. And so my work is really situated in the social sciences but also in the humanities. And so I draw a lot from looking at scholars who push my line of thinking in really formative ways. So again, these are peers, but there's no doubt that I've been also been shaped by, more on the more formal sense, mentors. There was a wonderful advisor in my PhD, Dr. Zhu Rong at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who was just so present and made so much time for me. And I take that sense of responsibility into my own work as well and the importance of being there, but

also knowing when to let my mentees grow on their own.

So again, I'm such a pleasure to be with you in this in this way and I look forward to further opportunities.

Hello, I am Eda Derhemi. I am a teaching associate professor in the Department of French and Italian at this university. I came to Urbana-Champaign in 1995 with my daughter, who was eight years old at that moment and spoke no English. During my PhD years in summer 2000, I had my second daughter, Laura, right after I had successfully finished my prelims. In 2001 with Laura, who was eight months old, my other daughter, who was a teenager, and my husband, I went to complete my dissertation fieldwork in Sicily. And the word, the first word of my little daughter was not English, her father's language, not Albanian, my language. But it was Italian and it was the word aqua, but with a very, very guttural sound, qua, and the rest is history. Of course, I could not have been able to do all this if I were not in a university like this one, I feel lucky to be a woman and to be a woman here.

I just want to offer a very brief contribution to the Celebration of Women Faculty. I will say one thing that I really appreciated about being here at Illinois [was] my very supportive department and my ability to, basically, be able to be a researcher and a scholar, but also a human. Attending to the work-life balance, I guess one could say. That's really allowed me to thrive here [and] keep my sanity—especially during this crazy pandemic. So, yeah, I would say that having a super supportive department, knowing that this is an institution that values both scholarship and the whole person has really been a big bonus and has made my time here pretty amazing.

Hello everybody, ny name's Zeynep Madak-Erdogan. I'm an associate professor of nutrition in Food Science and Human Nutrition Department, and today I just briefly want to share my gratitude for the position that I'm in. This was my dream job when I was 15 years old, and I'm so blessed to be part of this community and to have worked on issues that are near and dear to my heart. My lab focuses on women's health and also health disparities in women's health. We are blessed on this campus to work with the best of the best, collaborate with amazing scientists, and have amazing students and trainees. So, I am just so happy to be here, and I hope will be here many more years and unravel mysteries of human health and how nutrition, metabolism, exposure to environmental toxicants affect women's health and hopefully make an impact on society by utilizing the research that we do. Thank you.

I’m Zahra Mohaghegh, an Associate Professor in the NPRE Department, the Grainger College of Engineering.

I am the first woman to attain a tenured professorship in our department, a step toward equality for all women. My greatest accomplishment, however, is pioneering socio-technical risk analysis research and education.

The art and joy of my multidisciplinary risk analysis is in the use of engineering techniques to quantify the effects of physical failure mechanisms and their interactions with social performance that have the potential to create emergent technological destruction.

I established the Socio-Technical Risk Analysis (SoTeRiA) Research Laboratory, providing scientific approaches for risk assessment, risk management, and risk-informed decision-making and regulation.

The collaborative research environment at UIUC has given me the opportunity to advance risk science and train next-generation leaders to use risk-informed solutions for initiating safe, resilient, and socially responsible technological advancements.

It is a privilege and an honor to begin a new chapter of my career as a tenured faculty member in this exceptional Illinois community. Thinking of this important milestone, I would not have been able to come this far without invaluable support and love from my family, mentors, and colleagues. I would also like to acknowledge all the excellent learning opportunities that I had at my alma maters and here at the University of Illinois as a junior faculty member.

I remember one particular conversation with my dear doctoral advisor, Dr. Thomas Reeves, when I was a doctoral student at the University of Georgia. He once told me that his doctoral advisees are semi-peers to him and he considers it his role to support them to grow and become independent and contributing peer members of our scholarly community. Although I began my doctoral study with the career goal of becoming a faculty member, it was quite an eye-opening moment as well as a surreal feeling at the same time, for a student growing up in a culture with a strong hierarchical relationship between a teacher and a student.

With this promotion to Associate Professor on Indefinite Tenure, I feel a sense of gratitude and privilege that I am one step closer to following in the footsteps of my academic father and other significant mentors as an independent and contributing peer in the scholarly community. Throughout my faculty career, my hope is that I would be an advisor dedicated to mentoring my graduate students to grow and become valued peer members of the field. Lastly, as he always emphasized, I sincerely hope each day of my life is a process of becoming a truly socially responsible researcher whose life-long scholarship is dedicated to supporting individuals to experience a sense of well-being through meaningful and optimal teaching, learning and performance.

Hi, my name is Laura Rice. I'm an Associate Professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Community Health. I feel so fortunate to be a faculty member at the University of Illinois and appreciate all the strong women who have supported me in my professional career. During my years as a graduate student and as an assistant professor, I've been very fortunate to be in a field in which women are well-represented and respected. Both my department head and dean are compassionate, hard-working women who care deeply about the success of my department and college. I feel so fortunate to have such strong role models. I hope to one day serve as a mentor to other women on campus to help them achieve their goals and aspirations. Thank you.

I have to share the thanks that I have for the amazing women who have helped me get to where I am today. And particularly for Marilyn O'Hara Ruiz, a colleague, a friend, a mentor. She spent so much time helping me get started, setting me up. She was an incredible mentor to all sorts of students. She found the best in everybody, and she found a position for everybody. And her work lives on in those she trained and those she mentored, like me, and especially in all of the science that she did. She is still regarded as one of the leaders, so, although we lost her too early, I have nothing but thanks for the experience that I had working with her. And it's thanks to her that I am where I am.

While mathematics has always been fun and inspiring to me, it didn’t occur to me to imagine that I can be a math professor until late in graduate school. In some sense, it was liberating to pursue the science for its own sake, and see where it takes me. But even if I didn’t follow a prescribed agenda, at every step of my professional life, and especially in its decisive moments, there has been a mentor or an advocate who has enabled me to get to the next level. Their support and influence is sometimes only clear in hindsight, and the way I thank them is by paying it forward. After all, what good is a homotopy group if you can’t share its intriguing properties with a friendly group of students and colleagues? The content of our science may not care about people, but no science is done in a vacuum, and I am glad to be at a university that encourages that viewpoint.

I received my promotion and tenure in May of 2020 during a time that showed us such trials and yet triumphs. There were women all around the country who showed up and showed out, and I am proud to be among them. There's an African proverb that says, “If you educate a man, you're educating an individual. If you educate a woman, you're educating a nation.” I want to thank my nation of women who have inspired and supported and held me up during my entire journey. From my mom, to my fellow colleagues here, Cynthia Oliver, Sarah Hook, and Dr. Mom Ollie Watts Davis, and I look forward to the next generation of women who I know have next, who are growing right here at this university.

Like most women, one of the greatest challenges in academia is balancing work and family. There were so many doubts in the beginning. How can I possibly work full-time while raising three children? The decisions were made day-by-day. Some days I made sacrifices and stayed late in the office and missed the family dinner. Other days I left work early for the volleyball game. But what remained the same every day was the genuine love for my children and making sure they were reminded often with talks, hugs, and cookies. My kids eventually came to understand the benefits of independence as teens and now express pride in my work (my oldest daughter now talks of becoming a professor as well!). My three children are almost fully grown, and they are all beautiful in their own way. I can look back now and say with all honesty that the balance was not easy, but it was worth it. I would not want it any other way.

My name is Stephanie Ceman and I am honored that my colleagues here and at other institutions supported my promotion to Professor. I am here—at this point in my career—because I believed in my research vision (with plenty of moments of doubt) and doggedly persevered in the face of more rejections and micro-aggressions than I care to remember. I am here because my father was my #1 fan in my early years and I had a PhD mentor who believed in me. My advice to my female colleagues would be to hear and believe the people and colleagues who support you and recognize that you are not alone when the detractors and bullies appear. My sincere hope is that we as a society evolve to a place where everyone can pursue their dreams and aspirations in a climate of respect.

Being named only the fourth email full professor in the history of the School of Architecture this year was incredibly gratifying for me. As well I was honored by being named as CAS fellow for the coming year. I guess, for me the most gratifying part about being named a full professor is that I will be able to help my younger female colleagues mentor them and hopefully make a pathway that is not quite as challenging as the pathway has been for me and those who came before me. Thank you.

Greetings. My name is Fatima Husain, and I'm very honored to be part of the Women Faculty Celebration that is being organized by the Provost's office. I have been part of such celebrations in the past, and it was such a joy to be around other women faculty and to celebrate all their achievements and my own achievements. I want to congratulate them again today, and I also want to acknowledge the support of my family, my mentors and my allies on this campus and elsewhere. And I hope everyone enjoys the celebration. Thank you.

Hi, I'm so happy you're [reading] this! My name is Jessica Li, and I was recently promoted to the rank of full professor. As I reflect on my academic journey and thought about what reason I could share with you, let me help you navigate your own tenure and promotion process, I came up with two things. First, build self-awareness. Perfect your skills of self-reflection as you move along the journey. The idea is to do it often to correct any deviations due to distractions. This exercise will make sure you stay on your own journey. Second, find something that keeps you balance. For me, it is running. Set your own goals. Only think about meeting the plans you set for yourself. Don't try to compete with others. I'm serious here, don't try to compete with anyone. So you can be happy when you achieve your own goals. You don't need the extra stress here. I hope you find this helpful and good luck.

Hi, my name is Nicole Riemer. I am a professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences. I want to congratulate all of you for your achievements during the past year. No question this past year has been a difficult one. We all had to deal with our unique challenges. Sometimes grief. We had to change the way we go about our daily life. And things we usually take for granted were no more, but we persevered and that's something to be proud of. I want to share a poem with you, with it speaks to me during these times. The poem is by Danna Faulds and it's called “Walk Slowly”:

It only takes a reminder to breathe,
a moment to be still, and just like that,
something in me settles, softens, makes
space for imperfection. The harsh voice
of judgment drops to a whisper and I
remember again that life isn’t a relay
race; that we will all cross the finish
line; that waking up to life is what we
were born for. As many times as I
forget, catch myself charging forward
without even knowing where I’m going,
that many times I can make the choice
to stop, to breathe, and be, and walk
slowly into the mystery.

Good luck with finishing up the semester. And I hope to see many of you over summer and going into the fall semester.

10-Year Comparison of Women
Postdoctoral Fellows (2011-2021)

10-Year Comparison of Women
Specialized Faculty (2011-2021)

Department Executive Officers (2020-2021)

10-Year Comparison of Women
Specialized Faculty (2011-2021)

Department Executive Officers (2020-2021)

10-Year Comparison of Women
Postdoctoral Fellows (2011-2021)

10-Year Comparison of Women
Specialized Faculty (2011-2021)

Department Executive Officers (2020-2021)

10-Year Comparison of Women
Postdoctoral Fellows (2011-2021)

10-Year Comparison of Women
Specialized Faculty (2011-2021)

Department Executive Officers (2020-2021)

10-Year Comparison of Women
Postdoctoral Fellows (2011-2021)

10-Year Comparison of Women
Specialized Faculty (2011-2021)

Department Executive Officers (2020-2021)

10-Year Comparison of Women
Postdoctoral Fellows (2011-2021)

10-Year Comparison of Women
Specialized Faculty (2011-2021)

Department Executive Officers (2020-2021)

10-Year Comparison of Women
Postdoctoral Fellows (2011-2021)

10-Year Comparison of Women
Specialized Faculty (2011-2021)

Department Executive Officers (2020-2021)

10-Year Comparison of Women
Postdoctoral Fellows (2011-2021)

10-Year Comparison of Women
Specialized Faculty (2011-2021)

Department Executive Officers (2020-2021)

10-Year Comparison of Women
Postdoctoral Fellows (2011-2021)

10-Year Comparison of Women
Specialized Faculty (2011-2021)

Department Executive Officers (2020-2021)

10-Year Comparison of Women
Postdoctoral Fellows (2011-2021)

10-Year Comparison of Women
Specialized Faculty (2011-2021)

Department Executive Officers (2020-2021)

10-Year Comparison of Women
Postdoctoral Fellows (2011-2021)

10-Year Comparison of Women
Specialized Faculty (2011-2021)

Department Executive Officers (2020-2021)

10-Year Comparison of Women
Postdoctoral Fellows (2011-2021)

10-Year Comparison of Women
Specialized Faculty (2011-2021)

Department Executive Officers (2020-2021)

10-Year Comparison of Women
Postdoctoral Fellows (2011-2021)

10-Year Comparison of Women
Specialized Faculty (2011-2021)

Department Executive Officers (2020-2021)

10-Year Comparison of Women
Postdoctoral Fellows (2011-2021)

10-Year Comparison of Women
Specialized Faculty (2011-2021)

Department Executive Officers (2020-2021)

10-Year Comparison of Women
Postdoctoral Fellows (2011-2021)

10-Year Comparison of Women
Specialized Faculty (2011-2021)

Department Executive Officers (2020-2021)

10-Year Comparison of Women
Postdoctoral Fellows (2011-2021)

Hi, I’m Nadya Mason. It’s a pleasure to be speaking as part of the annual Celebration of Women Faculty at Illinois. This past year I was named as the first Rosalyn S. Yalow Professor of Physics, which was a tremendous bright spot in an otherwise very challenging year. Rosalyn Yalow won a Nobel Prize for developing radioactive tracing of substances such as hormones and vitamins in blood and other fluids. She got her PhD from the University of Illinois in 1945, and at the time was the only woman amongst the department’s 400 faculty and teaching assistants. Honestly, I don’t think her experience was all that fun. I’d like to say that the numbers have changed dramatically since then, but even today physics at Illinois is only 23% women faculty—and that’s way better than the average of 16%. We still have a lot of work to do. However, I do think my experience has likely been better than Yalow’s, partly because at 23%, you have a cohort. You’re no longer always the only woman on every committee; and when walking the halls to look for a lunch partner, you don’t always have to go with men. But more than that, we have critical mass to advocate for each other and for other women. As an example of the even subtle behavioral changes that increasing numbers and advocacy leads to, I believe that in 2005 I was the first woman faculty in my department to ever have a child before getting tenure. But after me, many women did this (well four and counting)—but they’ve all been successful and gotten tenure. I do appreciate the campus and departments efforts to advocate for women faculty, such as through TOPs hires, and the Gender Equity Council, which I had the pleasure to be on. But we need to continue to push, redouble our efforts, and fight against pervasive sexism and racism, in order to make our campus more equitable. My goal is to come back here in ten years when the numbers are less than 50% and laugh about how lame it was to gush about 23% women in 2021. Let me end by thanking all of the amazing women faculty at Illinois for your work and for being part of the crucial cohort. And, especially, thanks to women like Rosalyn Yalow for paving the way.

My View on March 8th - International Women's Day

March 8th is a great celebration of Women across the world. And on this day, I often think about the various women who impacted my life, motivated me and I am thankful to.

March 8th is the day of celebrating women scientists, teachers, doctors, nurses, and others in different facets of our democratic society. But mostly, I think about the women scientists in my computing field such as Ada Lovelace, Joan Clarke, Margaret Hamilton, Grace Hopper, the “ENIAC Women”, Anita Borg and many other female computer scientists, who came before us, impacted me and the field of computing and contributed greatly to this important technology without which we cannot imagine to live and work today, especially during these pandemic COVID-19 times.

March 8th is the day of celebrating mothers who gave us the foundations, motivated and encouraged us to be valuable members of the society, nudged us to be responsible and gain strong habits to navigate through the complexities of life. In many of our lives, mothers are the role models for us. For me, my mother is a very important role model for my scientific life, my understanding of the world around me, and contributing to the society in the best way I can. Her words “always do your best” are with me whereever I go and whatever I do in my professional and personal life.

March 8th is the day of celebrating female mentors who are such an important part of our professional lives. If I think about female mentors, I think about my two female mentors, Professor Jane Liu and Professor Marianne Winslett. I am very thankful for their advice and support as I was navigating as an assistant and associate professor through the various angles of teaching, research and service within our Computer Science Department, the Grainger College of Engineering College, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Campus, and beyond.

My name is Helen Nguyen. I am Ivan Racheff endowed professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Illinois. I am proud to be an Asian American and a female environmental engineer. I was born and raised in Vietnam. I became a naturalized US citizen because I want to contribute to this country, which gave me my education and my career. This is the country where I am raising a family, the country where I believe my son and I can be ourselves. Either you, your parents, grandparents, or great-great-grandparents came to this country because we want a world class education, a career where we can all reach our potentials, and a happy and peaceful life. While we aim for technical excellence, we should always remember that our work is to serve humanity. It does not matter whether you build bridges, invent a disrupting technology, or come up with a groundbreaking treatment for diseases, your work is eventually to serve humanity. We can only push the boundaries of science and technology when we look at ourselves not as human professors, researchers, or students, but as human beings who value each others’ differences and feelings. Compassion matters. When we all keep a balance of our brain and our heart, we can move mountains to serve humanity. From the bottom of my heart, I thank everyone who has helped me to become who I am now. There are too many to list: my family in Vietnam and the US, teachers, professors and mentors, friends and colleagues, and many of my students who are establishing themselves as successful professionals and will achieve more than I have been able to do.

Being a faculty member at the University of Illinois, and being selected for inclusion in this collection, is a wonderful honor. This short essay will, I hope, be of some use to other faculty, especially when they are confronted by the inevitable frustrations and disappointments that occur.

I love being a faculty member, and the pleasures in the job have grown over time. Early in my career, it was all about research—learning how to do research, discovering new directions and ways of thinking, beginning new collaborations, etc. I quickly realized that for me, having a close collaboration was the best part of being a researcher; what we could do together was so much more than what I could do by myself. This was particularly true of my collaboration (1995-2013) with Don Ringe, a historical linguist at Penn, with whom I worked to develop mathematical models and estimation methods to understand how the Indo-European languages evolved. That work remains one of the most cherished experiences in my career.

I also discovered early in my time as an assistant professor that working with postdocs and students was not only intellectually rewarding but also a source of great personal satisfaction. My relationships with my PhD students, especially, have become perhaps the best part of being a faculty member. I am still close to many of them, and they make a difference in my life. I also really love being part of a close knit department and working with other people to improve the department and our educational programs. I have enjoyed the larger community outside of my department, and been glad to contribute to it from time to time (e.g., the Anti-Racism Task Force within the Grainger College of Engineering). Academic life has so many aspects, and being part of this community and contributing in

different ways is richly rewarding.

But life as an academic is not just the good parts. Just like everyone else, I've had times when funding is scarce (or at least uncertain), times when it has been difficult to get a paper through the review process, times when my best ideas aren't yielding the results I wanted. Much as I love having graduate students, I've certainly had times when good students have found other labs more appealing, or when they aren't working out in my lab and go elsewhere. I have had times when my students are all graduating at the same time, and the lab has become too small; finding and training new students becomes urgently important, and not entirely within my control. So, there are certainly times when I've been discouraged. The one thing I remind myself of when those moments arise is that I really enjoy this research, I am fascinated by how challenging these problems are, and I enjoy working with students. In comparison, getting funded doesn't matter that much, and what other people think doesn't matter that much either.

Reminding myself that I do this because I really love it, not because it brings fame or approbation, is a big part of why I remain happy being an academic. And this is what I find myself telling my colleagues when they are discouraged by difficulties in getting funded, in finding the right students, or other common (and recurrent) phenomena. We all go through these times and the difficulties will pass. Let them pass, remember what you love about your work, and enjoy what there is!

All the best to you, whether newly starting out or (like me) well along your careers.

Hi, I'm Leslie Wexler and I wanted to thank you so much for this opportunity to say thank you for the professorship that I'm receiving, which is the John Colombo professorship. And, somewhat unusually, I think I actually know the person for whom my position is named. He was the associate dean when I started at the University of Illinois College of Law, and I still consider him a good friend. As someone who lateraled from another institution, I, like all people, think worried a little bit about whether I had made the right decision. And when I met with John to go over my courses and to sort of talk about how things would work, he just said, “I'm really glad we hired you,” and I sort of knew everything was going to be okay. And he really provided some helpful mentorship both to me as a colleague, but also when I took on some administrative roles as the associate dean myself. So I'm very lucky to have his name associated with mine.

I'm humbled to be a University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. My research has largely been shaped by my personal experiences, having a brother with Down syndrome, whose name is Ryan. My research and academic career stem from my experience with my brother, especially watching my mom advocate for him to receive appropriate services. Now I conduct research with mothers of children with disabilities and am continually impressed by their commitment to impact change, not only for their own children, but also for other individuals with disabilities and their families. Now having my own children, I feel even more committed to identifying ways to best support moms with kids with disabilities. This University Scholar award will enable me to continue to find ways to best support these families. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Rachel Whitaker and I'm a professor at the University of Illinois Microbiology department and the team leader of infection genomics for One Health at the Carl Woese Institute for Genomic Biology. I'm very proud to be here at the University of Illinois and to be part of this celebration of Women faculty. Women make up 50 percent of the population, but are far less than 50 percent of the faculty and leadership in STEM. And I think this is a really big, big problem for science and for scientists. And it needs to change. Thank you for listening.

My name's Christine Bashford and I'm an Associate Professor in the School of Music. This year, I've been an associate at the Center for Advanced Study with an external fellowship to work on my book project, Forgotten Voices, Hidden Pleasures. The book is a social and cultural history on violin playing in Britain between 1870 and 1930. And part of the story is about the thousands of women who for the first time ever took to the violin as working musicians. Where they found jobs, however, it was mostly doing low-level playing in restaurants, cinemas, rarely in symphony orchestras or as music professors. Those were all male domains. And these women strategies for overcoming the blocks they faced in seeking career advancement, equal pay, let alone professional authority has been a persistent theme in my project. And at times their activities have been a useful reminder for the present. While historical changes are congradual, terrain can shift to collegial support systems, collective pressure, and the allyship of those outside the group. My own journey with this book has been long. It was slowed by spending nearly 7 years as an admin role in our department, the associate professor trap that so many women fall into. But it was helped by two things. One was campus support for research leads. The other was talking with many wonderful women colleagues, but the direction of the book and broader career issues. And this is not to say that none of my male colleagues helped me. Some of them have long been real allies. Men who are actively feminist, who walk the walk and reflect regularly on the agenda of positionality for the future. I hope the male colleague supporting and advocating for women at Illinois will become the norm. I also wonder what campus might do to encourage that.

Hi, my name is Nicole Riemer. I am a professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences. I want to congratulate all of you for your achievements during the past year. No question this past year has been a difficult one. We all had to deal with our unique challenges. Sometimes grief. We had to change the way we go about our daily life. And things we usually take for granted were no more, but we persevered and that's something to be proud of. I want to share a poem with you, with it speaks to me during these times. The poem is by Danna Faulds and it's called “Walk Slowly”:

It only takes a reminder to breathe,
a moment to be still, and just like that,
something in me settles, softens, makes
space for imperfection. The harsh voice
of judgment drops to a whisper and I
remember again that life isn’t a relay
race; that we will all cross the finish
line; that waking up to life is what we
were born for. As many times as I
forget, catch myself charging forward
without even knowing where I’m going,
that many times I can make the choice
to stop, to breathe, and be, and walk
slowly into the mystery.

Good luck with finishing up the semester. And I hope to see many of you over summer and going into the fall semester.

This past year I had teaching release time provided through a Center for Advanced Study Fellowship at the same time as a pandemic that forced my lab to close temporarily and reduce our mouse colony. This really compelled me to think deeply about which projects were worth resurrecting when we reopened. The CAS fellowship gave me the space to engage in this deep reflection and also spend time developing my skills and knowledge in new areas. As a result, I actually stopped the specific project for which I was originally awarded the CAS fellowship, but was inspired to take a risk and begin a new research direction that is a much better fit for my lab's assets. The main lesson I've learned is to not feel obligated to continue a project or endeavor just because you've already invested time and money in it. These can be hard decisions, but part of the gift of academic freedom is the opportunity to choose the topics on which we spend our research time. And we shouldn't yield that power to anyone else.

I was recently tenured in the Department of Media & Cinema Studies and am honored to be included here as a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study and an Emerging Leaders Fellow. I would like to thank some of the large number of people who have worked in the care of my children during my pre-tenure years, without whom I would not have been able to conduct my academic work:

Dan Gilbert

Judy Ciafone

Russ Ciafone

Chris Wilson

Carmen Gewirth

Magaly Ávila

Victoria Mendoza

Erika Lopez

Teoko Pearson

Jacki Flemmings

Kelsey Kuhlman

Meng-Jue Wu

Patrick Ahasic

Nilam Swayampati

Lisa Pannbacker

Katie Pannbacker

Kathy Harshbarger

Ghada Abdalla

Meenu Sharma

Cindy Stark

Jennifer Robert

Katrina Smith

Allison Kittler

Brent McBride

Lynn Bell

During this period of COVID, I have become all the more aware of the care, work, and infrastructure necessary so that I can do my academic work.

The care crisis this year is real and ongoing with schools closed or hours heavily reduced and remote, limited assistance from social networks outside single-family homes, and the cost and work of childcare offloaded to individual families. Those with young children, single parents, and people sandwiched between care for children and older adults have been especially burdened. Care work already falls especially heavily on women, particularly pre-

tenure and non-tenure track mothers of young children, graduate teacher and researcher parents, first generation scholars and women of color who have heavier loads of social reproductive labor, fewer financial resources to pay for others to take it on, and often greater service and teaching work in their departments and university communities.1 The result is a campus where less than 30% of full professors are women, and a tiny fraction of that are women of color. The lack of support for care work is a critical issue of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The care crisis is acute during COVID, but it will be with us long after the pandemic because it is systemic; we do not have enough time or support for both care work and our academic work. Now would be an apt time for us to propose course releases or retroactive care leaves for faculty caregivers to make up for the deficits in support during COVID, as well as affordable, accessible childcare and care leaves for all workers on campus, so that they, just like faculty, can maintain working lives and the lives of others. And beyond our workplace, with a recognition of our interdependence with care workers, and our privileged position as women faculty, we can articulate calls for universal childcare, universal eldercare, federal paid leave for care, public social insurance for long-term care, and universal basic services so that everyone can get and provide care—as we need it, now, and in the future.

1 “COVID-19 Has Robbed Faculty Parents of Time for Research,” Chronicle of Higher Education, January 25, 2021 https://www.chronicle.com/article/covid-19-has-robbed-faculty-parents-of-time-for-research-especially-mothers?cid2=gen_login_refresh&cid=gen_sign_in; “COVID-19 and Beyond: Solutions for Academic Mothers,” Inside Higher Ed, March 11, 2021 https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/03/11/covid-19-and-beyond-solutions-academic-mothers

My name is Alyssa Prorok. I'm a faculty member in the Political Science Department here. Since my first year of graduate school, nearly 15 years ago, I've made two institutional changes. I've negotiated complicated dual career issues. I've had two children. And now that the rest of you, I've lived through a global pandemic that has brought into sharp relief the complexities of managing career and parenthood. I certainly wouldn't be where I am today without the tireless efforts of senior female colleagues and mentors that I've had throughout my career. My senior colleagues here and senior women in my field have worked tirelessly and intentionally to overcome obstacles to women's advancement in political science and have been instrumental in normalizing and destigmatizing women's issues in academia. There's still work to be done. My vision for the future is that we continue to address the leaky pipeline and women's representation at the highest levels of academia. And that, in addition, academia continues to diversify not only along gender lines, but also with regard to racial, ethnic, and other minority categories where there's still significant work to be done.

Hello, my name is Lila Sharif. I am an assistant professor of Asian American Studies here at UIUC. And I am also a spring 2021 Faculty Fellow for the Center for Advanced Study. Recently I was asked to talk about a mentor who has been instrumental in the field in which I conduct research and has also been a huge influence on me as a person. So I thought that I would take this opportunity to acknowledge one of the most instrumental people to my career. And that's Dr. Yen Le Espiritu. Dr. Espiritu, is a distinguished professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego. She has published extensively on race, gender, migration, US colonialism, and wars in Asia.

It's an honor to have received the Campus Executive Officer Distinguished Leadership Award. As Director of the School of Integrative Biology, I'm fortunate to work with so manycreative scholars, capable staff, and enthusiastic students. I hope that some of the work that I do in this role has made their path easier. I've been inspired during this year of COVID-19, by what has been accomplished both in terms of the visible work in teaching and learning, research and service by the invisible work done in supporting each other during this pandemic. I feel so fortunate to be part of such an amazing school. I also want to say congratulations to all the other women being recognized this year. I'm looking forward to a time when we can celebrate in person.

Hi, I'm Jen Erkert, Head of the Department of Dance. When I first started this job, I had no formal training in leadership, but I did have life experience as a woman, a wife, a daughter, a sister and friend. And I had years of experience and expertise of my profession. So I asked myself, could I bring my expertise as a dance maker, as a collaborator, creative problem-solver, to the role of leadership. Could I choreograph leadership? This was critical as it freed me from having to fit the mold of what I thought a leader should be. And that mold was largely shaped by white men for the last 2000 years anyway. So by relying on my experiences as a woman, as an artist, it gave me confidence that I had the knowledge and the skills necessary to shape leadership in my way. This is a call to action to women leaders. We need you, we need you to bring your multiple unique life experiences, professional expertise, and identities to this role. In order to do, redefine and reshape what it means to be a leader in the 21st century. Thank you.

I just want to offer a very brief contribution to the Celebration of Women Faculty. I will say one thing that I really appreciated about being here at Illinois [was] my very supportive department and my ability to, basically, be able to be a researcher and a scholar, but also a human. Attending to the work-life balance, I guess one could say. That's really allowed me to thrive here [and] keep my sanity—especially during this crazy pandemic. So, yeah, I would say that having a super supportive department, knowing that this is an institution that values both scholarship and the whole person has really been a big bonus and has made my time here pretty amazing.

Hello, my name is Dr. Mary Ramy and I am a senior lecturer in the Department of Communication. When I think about my aspirations for my female students on campus, I think about how I want them to develop a sense of curiosity in what they are studying and confidence in who they are and in expressing their ideas. And I develop my courses to help students meet those aspirations. I'm so pleased to be a part of this celebration of faculty. And thank you so much.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the many mentors I have had throughout the years. Some of them were officially appointed, while others were generous colleagues and collaborators willing to share their wisdom and experiences to help others succeed. All of them conferred on me valuable advice, such as the importance of performing solo work, treating all talks as potential job talks, and stating (with absolute certainty) that I will experience failure, which I have had.

Hi, I'm Sarita Adve. I'm honored to receive these recognitions. I absolutely love my work, but as happens to most of us there have been tough times too, so I want to thank all my mentors, collaborators, students, colleagues, and especially my husband and my children, who helped me through those times. I wish you a wonderful community of cheerleaders too, and then hope you can pay it forward to help others succeed.

Hi, I am Jen Hardesty, and I am a professor and director of undergraduate programs in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies. I am delighted to share in the celebration of women faculty who are recognized for their tremendous accomplishments over the last year. I received the Campus Award forMentoring. Over the years I've realized that the most important mentors throughout my academic journey are my cohort of graduate school peers. They are group of eight fabulous, strong, successful women who are my constant role models and sources of support. So my advice to women faculty, especially those just starting out at the U of I, is to form a support network with other women faculty, hold each other up, and celebrate each other often.

What a happy event—the celebration of women! My celebratory mentors were my mother, my sisters, my friends, my teachers, my colleagues and now they are my students! And it goes on and on. So grateful for all of them and for this cycle of mentorship that we must carry forward!

The popular theatrical trope of women holding each other back, deliberately sabotaging each other, is just that, it is theater. For the most part it is fiction. No one ever put glass in my pointe shoes or tried to trip me! The women who shared professional space with me were not all nurturing and sunshine, but they were all extremely professional role-models and they set the barhigh. And most of them turned around to help others coming along after them. So, let’s keep that up! It is right and it is glorious to do so.

Congratulations to all. And Happy Spring.

Hello, I want to thank you for the support that I received and for the amazing award for teaching. It really has been a wonderful experience to work with the students here. Everyone is so encouraging and supportive all the way from the Dean through the department has my peers and students. I'm very lucky that I get to do the work that I'm passionate about. And I'm also fortunate that I have the love and support of my family, my spouse Vincent, and my mother, my siblings, their partners, and my nieces and nephews. I was also blessed with four amazing canine kids who really showed me what endurance is about, and so their memory continues to motivate me today. I also want to acknowledge all the amazing teachers I've had throughout my life, starting in kindergarten all the way through to today. Teachers like Kathy Wisner, who continue to support me and motivate me and to encourage me to do my very best. I'm proud to be a member of the faculty here and I'm so glad that I can say thank you.

As a first-generation college student from a low-income family in Taiwan, I never have dreamed that I would become a professor in the United States and eventually a program director. When I stepped into these roles, I felt considerable reservations about whether I was ready for the position. I count myself very fortunate to have many amazing mentors and colleagues who have always supported and believed in me. I recognize that a lot of women may share my feelings of self-doubt and lack of confidence, feelings that can prevent us from stepping into new roles even when we are qualified and ready. When you feel these doubts, reflect back on your journey and realize that what you have accomplished has prepared you to excel in this moment. I also encourage you to take advantage of the great resources and wonderful faculty development workshops, leadership programs, and teaching workshops provided on campus. Participating in these workshops and programs transformed my confidence to succeed as a professor. These experiences have given me an immensely rewarding career where I can share in my students’ journeys as they prepare to make extraordinary contributions to our society and make differences in individuals and communities.