Minority female students get career advice from Tucson professionals

In an effort to support women graduate students of color, the workshop featured five professional women who talked about the challenges of their graduate school years.

"I learned that sometimes you are limited by choices you make in life," Edie Auslander, human resources vice president at Tucson Newspapers Inc., told the crowd of about 25.

She recalled how she initially passed up her first graduate school opportunity at Columbia University because her parents were against it.

"I later went to graduate school after I had married and had three children. It took me four and a half years," she added.

The workshop was sponsored by the Women of Color Consortium, an Tucson-based organization founded in 1996 to network with and mentor female graduate students of color.

Entitled "Success in the After(school) Life," the workshop was held Thursday in the Memorial Student Union's Tucson Room.

Amelia Tynan, UA vice provost for university information technology, recalled her first day of graduate school, just after she had moved to America from the Philippines. She said at the time she felt she was a poor English speaker.

"By the time I plucked up the courage to speak in class, the topic would change," she recalled.

"I came from a family of 12 and suddenly I was alone in this country. It was a very lonely existence."

Helen Schafer, former UA professor, and Slivy Edmonds Cotton, a senior managing director at the Edmonds Group, a private investment and merchant banking firm, also spoke at the workshop.