Jobs, collaborations, and women leaders of the global chemistry enterprise: An overview

Authors: Cheng, Huai; MILLER, BRADLEY - American Chemical Society; WU, MARINDA - American Chemical Society

Submitted to: Book Chapter
Publication Type: Book / Chapter
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/18/2015
Publication Date: 9/2/2015
Citation: Cheng, H.N., Miller, B., Wu, M.L. 2015. Jobs, collaborations, and women leaders of the global chemistry enterprise: An overview. In: Cheng, H. N., Wu, M. L.,Miller, B. D., editors. Jobs, collaborations, and women leaders of the global chemistry enterprise. ACS Symposium Series, Volume #1195, Washington, DC: American Chemical Society. p. 1-28.

Interpretive Summary: This article provides an overview of three topics: jobs, collaborations, and women leaders in chemistry. These are important and timely issues affecting chemistry practitioners today. Jobs certainly rate near the top of most people’s list of priorities. Jobs are also important to ACS as it seeks to help its members find and retain jobs. In the fast-paced interconnected world today, collaboration is becoming an increasingly useful tool for career success. With faster and easier electronic communication, international collaboration is growing as an attractive option to facilitate innovation, access global talent, and produce better results. In the workplace, women often face obstacles to pursue and continue a scientific career. Some progress has been made in recent years, but further improvement is still needed. The perspectives and experience of 33 scientific and professional leaders on these three topics are summarized in this article. This article also serves as the introductory chapter of a book, “Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders of the Global Chemistry Enterprise”, to be published by ACS.

Technical Abstract: The global chemistry enterprise continues to be active and contributes substantially to the gross domestic products and employment in many countries. This article provides an overview of the issues of jobs, collaborations, and women leaders of the global chemistry enterprise. The availability of jobs is a significant contributor to the attractiveness of chemistry and chemical engineering as a career and ongoing job satisfaction of professionals working in this area. Included in this article are the issue of supply and demand of chemistry jobs, women as professors and professionals, and increased access to international career opportunities offered by ACS International Activities. Collaboration has always been known to be an effective method to stimulate and accelerate innovation. With increasing globalization, international collaboration is becoming increasingly important. A large number of successful international collaborations are provided in the chapters in this book and summarized in this article. The chemistry profession has often been difficult for women because of various forms of bias and competing priorities of family and career. Yet, a number of women scientists over the years have overcome difficulties and achieved notable success in scientific scholarship and/or professional leadership. Examples of successful women scientists, engineers, and leaders are cited in this article and described in detail in this book. All the information has been taken from the lectures given in two international symposia at the ACS national meeting in San Francisco in August 2014.