COVID letter and website

As a response to concerns about the impact of COVID-19 on hiring, MPOWIR participants composed a letter to distribute broadly to employers addressing the impacts. To encourage broad distribution, we’ve drafted an email template (available below and via Google doc) to support sharing. We encourage you to use customize the template and share within your departments, HR, and institutional staff.

“Dear Colleague,

While many people are finding their way back to in person classes, gatherings and meetings post pandemic, the lasting effects of COVID-19 on the careers of early career scientists, particularly women, will linger for years to come.   To address this, participants of the Mentoring Physical Oceanography Women to Increase Retention (MPOWIR) program composed a letter for broad distribution stating these impacts, and calling for broad inclusion of impact statements in hiring. While many institutions are developing formal processes for COVID impact considerations in promotion and tenure review, the same consideration needs to be extended to those that are in the hiring stage.  As stated in the letter, “Failing to account for differences in productivity during the review of applications would bias the assessment of anyone under consideration…”. MPOWIR encourages wide distribution of this letter to anyone involved in decisions around applications and hiring. On the website linked below you will find the letter, sample prompts, and docx version to download and customize: http://mpowir.org/resources/covid/ “

Letter Google doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h9FXewIAAz6Nw0VHZWofflPy7H8aOyEJC0AXhxEkggU/edit?usp=sharing