Grad women improve communication

The Graduate and Professional Women's Organization has begun a concerted effort to open the lines of communication between graduate and professional women so that they feel less isolated on campus. According to GPWO Program Coordinator Jenn Pollitt, these women can now contact the Organization's office -- as well as each other -- through use of the GPWO's new e-mail account and listserv. The e-mail account, which is linked directly to the Penn Women's Center, is available to anyone with questions about GPWO. The address of the account is "gpwo@dolphin.upenn.edu". The listserv, located at "gpwo-members@dolphin.upenn.edu", aims to increase interaction between graduate and professional women, serving not only as a way for members to send messages to each other, but also a means of notifying any interested members about upcoming events, Pollitt explained. She added that she made the decision to turn to the Internet after hearing multiple complaints from graduate women that there is not enough interaction between female students in the various graduate schools. "Women tend to feel very isolated and out of sync with what's going on on campus," Pollitt said. This complaint was especially voiced by women studying the "hard sciences," such as Engineering, Physics and Chemistry, with only a few women in each department, she explained. Pollitt added that while the listserv has been active for almost four months, few people are aware of its existence. "Not a lot of people send mail because only the GPWO members who go to the meetings have the address," Pollitt said. But Social Work graduate student Koli Banik said she was not sure how successful the listserv would be. "There are so many different listservs," she said. "I don't know how much usage it would gather." GPWO most recently used the listserv to advertise a play by a University alumna performed last Wednesday. The play, called Water Over Time: A Monologue of Women and Science, was a one-woman production by University graduate Sharon Glassman that focused on women's contributions to physics. "The goal was to get scientists and non-scientists to be interested in women and science," Pollitt said. Approximately 25 people gathered in Meyerson Hall to watch the story of Laura Bassi, an 18th century physician and professor from Bologna. Water Over Time was sponsored by GPWO, the Penn Women's Center and the Department of Physics and Astronomy.