Mom the Chemistry Professor (2^nd Ed., 2nd ed. 2018) Personal Accounts and Advice from Chemistry Professors who are Mothers

When is the "right" time? How can I meet the demands of a professorship whilst caring for a young family? Choosing to become a mother has a profound effect on the career path of women holding academic positions, especially in the physical sciences. Yet many women successfully manage to do both. In this second edition, which is a project of the Women Chemists Committee (WCC) of the American Chemical Society (ACS), 40 inspirational personal accounts describe the challenges and rewards of combining motherhood with an academic career in chemistry. The authors are all women at different stages of their career and from a range of institution types, in both tenure and non-tenure track positions. The authors include women from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, who became mothers at different stages of their career, and who have a variety of family structures.  Aimed at undergraduate and graduate students of chemistry, as well as postdoctoral fellows and early career faculty, these contributions serve as examples for women considering a career in academia but worry about how this can be balanced with other important aspects of life. The authors describe how they overcame particular challenges, but also highlight aspects of the system, which could be improved to accommodate women academics, and particularly encourage more women to take on academic positions in the sciences.

Introduction.- Safety Chapter.- The Best Job in the World.- Equilibrium and Stress: Balancing One Marriage, a “Two-Body Problem,” and Three Children.- If at First You Don’t Succeed, Don’t Give Up on Your Dreams.- Invictus.- My Circus: Please Note That I Have No Formal Training in Juggling.- Planned Serendipity.- Readymade Family.- Mother and Community College Professor.- From Pre-med to U.S. Professor of the Year: My Personal Journey.- Minha Vida e Minha Carreira e Minha Família  (My Life and My Career and My Family).- Chemistry in the Family.- Are You Always This Enthusiastic?.- How Motherhood Shaped My Professorship.- Upward Bound to a Ph.D. in Chemistry.- I’m.a.Gene- Destined for a Career in the Sciences.- It Always Seems Impossible Until It Is Done.- On Breastfeeding, Supramolecular Chemistry, and Long Commutes: Life as an Assistant Professor, Wife, and Busy Mother of Three.- TheWindow of Opportunity.- Pieces of a Puzzle.- Wanting It All.- On Our Own Terms.- Family First, Extraordinary Career.- Family Matters: How Family Influenced my Career.- Mother and Chemist: Every pitfall is an opportunity to rise with a new beginning.- Taking an Unconventional Route?.- The path to academia and motherhood: It takes a village.- Elements to Successful Motherhood and the Professoriate.- A Family Grows.- Teacher to Scientist and Back Again.- A Divinely Ordered Path.- Raising three children across three continents.- Ebony and Women and Science……. Oh My!.- From the Periodic Table to the Dinner Table.- The Bigger Picture: My Journey to a Purposeful Life and Career in Academia.- Encounters of the Positive Kind.- The Long and Winding Road.- I Finally Know What I Want to Be When I Grow Up.- Finding Rhythm.- My Not-So-Secret Double-Life as a Chemistry Professor and Mom.- Remarkable, Delightful, Awesome: It Will Change Your Life, Not Overnight but Over Time.

Dr. Kimberly Woznack is a Professor at California University of Pennsylvania, where she served as the Chair of the Department of Chemistry & Physics from 2011-2014. Dr. Woznack earned a B.S. in chemistry from Hartwick College, and a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from the University of Wisconsin Madison before completing a post-doctoral fellowship in chemistry education at the University of New Hampshire.  Dr. Woznack has been a proud member of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) Women's Consortium since 2005, having served as the Secretary, Treasurer, and President.  Dr. Woznack has served on the American Chemical Society (ACS) Women Chemist Committee (WCC) since 2011, becoming the Chair in 2018.  Dr. Woznack, her husband and two sons, live in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Dr. Amber Flynn Charlebois is currently a Lecturer and the Pre-health Advisor at SUNY Geneseo but accepted a position at Nazareth College to begin asan Assistant Professor in the Fall of 2018. She received her B.S. Degree from Syracuse University, her PhD from the University of Buffalo, and continued as a postdoctoral associate at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She has been teaching organic and biochemistry at the undergraduate level for the past 17 years where she has developed her research program to investigate the interaction of the small dye molecule, cresyl violet, with nucleic acids and the synthesis of stercobilin, a potential biomarker for childhood autism. During this time Dr. Charlebois has mentored more than 60 students in research projects, which has led to numerous student presentations at local, regional and national chemistry meetings. She has been maneuvering the two-body-problem / tenure track / non-tenure track landscape during this professional journey. She is married to fellow chemist, Jay, and has four children: three of her own, Steven, Matthew and Victoria, and her niece, Kyra. She is very active i