Amid busy days at the Feinberg School of Medicine, the Women Faculty Organization provides an opportunity for community-building at Northwestern’s medical school.
The Women Faculty Organization was established more than 30 years ago to promote and support the women of Feinberg. Feinberg instructors and professors, male and female alike, are eligible to become members of the organization, which holds meetings on the first Thursday of each month.
The organization also hosts four events throughout each school year to promote women in their professional field and allow them to network. These include a research event, a meet-and-greet, a visiting scholar event and the award ceremony for the Paula H. Stern Award for Outstanding Women in Science and Medicine awards ceremony.
For the meet-and-greet event, which takes place early in the academic year, WFO Chair Prof. Maria Dizon said the organization tries to target faculty within their first five years at Feinberg.
“The idea is that you are new to an institution and are trying to build your career, and that’s hard to do without a network,” Dizon said.
With the organization’s help, more faculty members are familiar with each other, according to Dizon. She said Feinberg can sometimes feel very big, and because of the WFO, she knows more people — especially women — outside of her department.
WFO also hosts an awards ceremony in conjunction with the pharmacology department to give out the Paula H. Stern Award for Outstanding Women in Science and Medicine. The award is named after Dr. Paula Stern, who worked at Feinberg for 50 years. This year’s recipient was Feinberg Prof. Debra Weese-Mayer, chief of the Division of Pediatric Autonomic Medicine at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.
Weese-Mayer, also a WFO member, said the organization focuses on promoting and mentoring women. She recently started attending WFO meetings, but said she has always been an activist to make sure young people, especially women, get opportunities in medicine.
When Weese-Mayer was in medical school at the University of Chicago, there were only 20 women out of 104 students in her class, she said. Four years earlier, it was just four out of 104.
“I’ve gotten used to over the years of being one of not many, and I think most people of my generation continue to pay it forward to make sure everybody gets every opportunity,” Weese-Mayer said.
Weese-Mayer said she is thrilled that this kind of organization exists at Feinberg and said she hasn’t seen this kind of collaboration between women leadership in any other organization she has participated in.
Feinberg Prof. Ruchi Gupta, a co-chair of the WFO, emphasized the importance of the mentorship the WFO provides, with women further along in their careers setting an example for new Feinberg faculty.
“Sometimes you can’t be what you can’t see,” Gupta said.
Gupta has served as a WFO co-chair for two years and believes there is still work to be done with the organization. She said she would like to see the group grow and hopes to add events, particularly quarterly discussions on a variety of topics and more networking events.
Gupta said the organization has a variety of different age groups because the younger members benefit from the advice on how to have a solid work-life balance. She mentioned her excitement from seeing a previous resident in her clinic attend a WFO meeting.
“It’s just so special watching the careers of women you’ve mentored for a long time and how they’ve flourished,” Gupta said. “I think that makes it all worthwhile.”
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the number of women in Dr. Debra Weese-Mayer’s medical school class. The Daily regrets this error.
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