A recent event of the Purdue Women's Network

Female graduate students at Purdue University seeking networking and social support have a new place to turn thanks to Department of Communication master's student Sara Hauber's project, the Purdue Women's Network.

Launched on Purdue's West Lafayette campus in August, the Purdue Women's Network is a networking- mentoring program aimed to increase the social support for, and retention of, women graduate students at Purdue.

"It gathers a network of women who express an intent to support everyone else in the network and to help them get what they need," Hauber said. "It's a space of trust, openness and knowing someone else cares."

Hauber began creating her project in the fall of 2007 after noticing the high attrition rates of female graduate students across the nation. In her research she found that lack of social support was a major factor in attrition. This information complemented her experience during research focus groups conducted by the Purdue Women's Resource Office, at which women expressed needs for mentoring, networking and social support beyond one-on-one academic advising.

To fill that void, Hauber teamed up with the Purdue Women's Resource Office and began putting together the nation's first-ever campus-wide women graduate student social network program, built on three main components: social networking events, practical workshops and speaker luncheons.

"The immediate goal of the program is to increase women's perceptions of social support on campus. The ultimate impact is, we hope, on attrition," Hauber said. "We want to see if the women in our program are actually sticking it out."

To measure the program's impact on women's perceptions of social support, stress, and coping, Hauber distributed a 75-question longitudinal survey to nearly 3,000 Purdue female graduate students. The survey measures the effectiveness of the program by asking the students questions on: perceptions of social support, size of social network and levels of stress, among other key factors that may lead to attrition.

Hauber said the follow-up surveys, scheduled to be distributed in December and again in April, will be fundamental in determining whether this program first, has an impact on social factors that could lead to attrition, and second, can be used as a model for future programs.

"Our long-term goal is to survey this cohort of women over the next 4 to 6 years to assess their attrition rates," Hauber said. "We want to see if this can work at a big university so we can ship this out to other universities with high attrition rates."

For now, the program is still in its pilot stage and has hosted four events. Purdue Women's Resource Office has been responsible for the managerial roles of Hauber's program since its inception. Hauber remains in a facilitator's role.