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Dear Editor,
I wish to thank Jane Phillips for doing such an excellent job of capturing the flavour of what I had to say. I wanted to add two comments.
First, I hope that no women get discouraged by the 'reality' that I described. My comments were intended for women strongly committed to careers in science and engineering. For women who are not strongly committed, let me assure you that I can think of no career that could be more rewarding. Because science and engineering are definitive subjects, with right/wrong answers, the 'politics' is much less important here than in such subjects as English or History. While I think it is important to play 'politics', I do it much less than faculty members in 'softer' fields.
Second, my title and address, as of 1 September 1995, will be Dean of Thayer School of Engineering, 8000 Cummings Hall, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, 03755-8000. That is in New Hampshire, about two hours north-west of Boston. My e-mail address will be garmire@dartmouth.edu. I am very proud of Dartmouth. They have developed a very successful 'Women in Science Project' with funding from a variety of sources that offers women students opportunities to do research from their first year in college. This increases retention. In fact 25 per cent of the science majors at Dartmouth are women, an extraordinarily high ratio for the USA. I invite continuing dialog on these issues.
Elsa Garmire
William Hogue Professor of Engineering
Center for Laser Studies
University of Southern California
Los Angeles CA 90089-1112
USA