Betsy Hoffman was the Senior Economist from the Experimental CCOFFE Group I facilitated. There were five junior women in the group from a variety of schools and not all from departments of economics. As half observer and half participant, I spent a substantial amount of time watching how the sessions unfolded. Betsy Hoffman was a wise and knowledgeable mentor, who quickly established a rapport with the junior women. One of the most valuable aspects of CCOFFE were the relationships and peer mentoring between the junior women themselves. To the extent that I could understand the specifics of the conversations not being an experimentalist, the research peer-mentoring sessions seemed to be the liveliest and the most productive. One can only imagine what it would be like if all departments where economists are housed had a critical mass of women! As the CCOFFE Klatch sessions combined two groups with varying pairing, the junior women did have an oportunity to meet and hear the majority of the other senior and junior women. CCOFFE participants rated the research, grant-writing and networking sessions the highest, with the "How to Write a Successful Grant" talk by Dan Newlon of NSF far and away the highest ranked. One can only hope that the junior women are successfully funded over the next several years! Life balancing issues and experiences varied widely both among the junior women and the senior economists, with the interesting result that the facilitators clearly ranked the life balancing session higher than either the junior or senior women. The academic success of the senior women compared to the facilitators and the relative inexperience of the junior women may explain this difference. I am looking forward to running the Eastern Economic Association regional version of CCOFFE with Daphne Kenyon in March 1999 in Boston!

CCOFFE was a refreshing and invigorating experience. I was surrounded by dozens of very bright women economists, all challenging themselves and discovering new angles in their work and in their lives. Even as a facilitator I reflected on my own history and early career expectations and subsequent accomplishments. At the conclusion of the three days I felt that I had made new friends, had set new goals and had gotten great tips on all aspects of life and work. Perhaps most importantly, I left with a decidedly more positive attitude about my work.

The CCOFFE meeting was balanced between smaller team meetings and larger topic-oriented sessions when two teams would join together. Both types of events served useful purposes. In our team meetings, people were able to focus on their individual career plans, while the larger sessions provided perspective. In our first team meeting, we had each person name her number one issue to be dealt with during CCOFFE. One mentioned choosing viable research topics, one mentioned marketing herself (in the contexts of reentering the job market and getting grants), one mentioned the whole research process, and one mentioned getting research out the door. This led into a useful discussion of sending one's work around and in general keeping on people's radar screen. We returned to these themes throughout our subsequent team meetings and elicited specifics regarding each person's career path. We ended our first meeting with each person stating what they wanted to accomplish by the end of 1998. We returned to this idea in our fourth team meeting, when we committed our short-run and long-run plans to paper. The larger group meetings on research, grant-getting, networking, and life-balancing, each led by our team leaders and one other senior woman, were all very interesting. In the life-balancing session, one topic arose that probably doesn't come up very often for the general public: the pros and cons of marrying another economist. The conference went smoothly for the most part, my only disappointment being that I didn't get a chance to meet and talk with every one of the attendees. The binder of relevant materials, especially the short biographies on each attendee, proved very instructional. I found the whole meeting very inspiring and enjoyable. How often do you get 60 women economists together to talk about career-building strategies? This was likely the first time it has happened, but hopefully will not have been the last.

The parts of the CCOFFE workshop that I thought were the most successful were the work sessions during which the junior women discussed each other's research projects. I was impressed by the conscientious preparation of the discussants and the useful ideas they generated. We really have some gifted junior women coming up the ranks in the economics profession! I also thought that the senior women had a lot of wise life advice and helpful "nuts and bolts" tidbits of information on net-working, grant-writing, and publishing. I found myself wishing that I had been able to attend a CCOFFE workshop 17 years ago when I was starting out as an assistant professor in a department of 24 economists which had only one woman other than myself.

Return to the Newsletter Page