Harvard and Radcliffe say they are working hard to encourage women in their pursuit of the sciences.

Science Alliance is a freshman orientation program for women that includes four days of panel discussions on concentration and career paths, introductions to faculty and tours of science facilities.

Participants say the program is important because it provides a network to other female students and to the female faculty members.

"Science Alliance is just a way to make a connection," says Elizabeth W. Patton '00, who participated in the program last year.

The highlight of the program this year was a panel discussion that included a forensic scientist, a meteorologist and a patent lawyer, Arnott said.

Arnott says seeing all the paths women can take in the sciences makes the panel useful.

"[The panel served] to broaden students' notions of where they can take science," Arnott says. "Students can see that it is okay to experiment with different career paths in science."

Science Alliance participants find a continuation of their network through the student-run Women in Science at Harvard and Radcliffe (WISHR), to which approximately 600 women belong.

"A lot of the girls who participate in Science Alliance become part of WISHR," Patton says.

In addition to providing a support network and holding panel discussions and faculty dinners, WISHR sponsors a big sister-little sister program for one-on-one advising, says former WISHR co-president Van L. Cheng '98.

Another program offered by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study--the Radcliffe Research Partnership Program--pays undergraduate women to work closely with female scholars.

Program Coordinator Colleen A. MacDonald calls the research program a "mentoring partnership."

She says, "Students do interesting stuff, not just photocopying."

Such programs are part of a national trend to attract women to the sciences.

According to Eisenberg, programs such as Science Alliance encourage women to pursue science more than they have in the past.