Panelists at the Fall Female Faculty Reception were (from left) UT Southwestern President Dr. Daniel K. Podolsky, Dr. Sharon Reimold, Dr. Deborah Diercks, and Nobel Laureate Dr. Michael Brown.

The Office of Women’s Careers (OWC) and the Women in Science and Medicine Advisory Committee (WISMAC) had their annual Fall Female Faculty Reception. The topic this year was “Building Career Success: The Importance of Sponsorship.”

Sponsorship has emerged as an important component of career development, and recent studies show that women are less sponsored than men, in both the business world and academia. This might contribute partly to the low percentage of women in upper level leadership positions.

We had an outstanding panel to discuss their experience with sponsoring others and being sponsored. The panelists included UT Southwestern President Daniel K. Podolsky, M.D., Mike Brown, M.D., Deborah Diercks, M.D., and Sharon Reimond, M.D.

Dr. Helen Yin, Associate Dean of the Office of Women's Careers, presented the Introduction to Sponsorship and brought to light the studies of how women are sponsored less than men.

There were 96 attendees and we collected 52 evaluations. Among these, 77 percent were women. Most were assistant professors (37 percent), although there are good representations of associate professors and professors (20 percent and 28 percent, respectively). We hope this will jumpstart conversations between men and women about mentorship and sponsorship to support all our faculty. The importance of sponsorship should also be emphasized in the non-faculty side of the UT Southwestern Medical Center.

Please see details and resources from the event below:

• Building Career Success: The Importance of Sponsorship PowerPoint Slides
• Center Times article with video of Reception
• Additional Sponsorship Resources

We analyzed the evaluation responses and the results are summarized in the table below: