Alice Pawley is an assistant professor of engineering education at Purdue University. She blogs at the intersection of women's studies and engineering, a pretty empty space but with potential to grow. She wants to be a feminist-but-tenured professor when she grows up.
SciWo is an assistant professor of geosciences. She blogs about the intersection of science and real life - primarily based on her first-hand experiences. Her older posts can be found here.
When I began to blog almost 5 years ago, I wanted to share stories of my graduate school experience with other women scientists in the hopes that we could form a virtual support network for each other. Back then it took me weeks to find even one other woman doing the same thing with a blog. Today, there is a whole community of women blogging about their experiences in science and engineering, from undergraduates to tenured faculty. A google search of "woman science blog" or similar will point to some prominent blogs and from there a newbie blog reader can use blog rolls and comment threads to find the panopoly of bloggers having more intimate conversations about life, work, and the precarious juggling act of "having it all."
You might have guessed this was coming. My blogging frequency has dropped off dramatically this year, particularly this semester. I keep writing "yep, I haven't died yet - I'll tell you all about what I'm doing sometime, really" posts, and not ever following up.
One of my colleagues Amy Slaton (a historian of engineering and engineering education at Drexel) has started a new blog in conjunction with the completion of her new book, Race, Rigor and Selectivity in U.S. Engineering: The History of an Occupational Color Line. Her work is brilliant -- thoughtful, grounded, clear, and with an appalling message about the raced character of engineering education.
Okay. It's been another month since I blogged. But since I last wrote, my dad wrote the family holiday letter and asked me how many places I've traveled to. Here's the list.
January
To Detroit to look at the SWE Archives
To RTP for ScienceOnline2009
February
To Arizona, invited to a workshop on engineering and ethics education
To Washington DC for a panel on research in engineering education
March
To Kentucky, to do some intense PEER mentoring in engineering education
April
I think nowhere
May
To Madison for my dad's retirement
To a room at Purdue for a week's development of a overhauled course
June
To Washington DC for JAM
To Amsterdam and Delft for a workshop on gender and engineering
July
To Detroit again to work in the SWE archives
To Grafton, New York for a workshop on engineering and identity
To British Columbia via Colorado and 5 national parks by car for our vacation
August
Back to Indiana from BC via Minnesota and the Minnesota Science Museum
September
Nowhere
October
To Long Beach for the SWE National Conference
To San Antonio for the Frontiers of Education Conference
November
To Atlanta for the National Women's Studies Association conference
December
Nowhere, thank god.
No wonder I'm tired. I think doing this much travel is not normal (or is it, for assistant professors?) After sending this list to my dad, I promised myself that I would not travel so much next year. For realz. And I have a whole bunch of carbon offsets to buy.
On December 6, 1989, an armed gunman named Marc Lepine entered an engineering classroom at Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, Quebec. He demanded all 48 men in the class leave the room, lined up all 9 women against a wall, and, shouting "You are all a bunch of [expletive] feminists!", proceeded to shoot them. He went into the hall and shot 18 more people, mostly at random. He finally shot himself.
He had killed 14 women all together, and injured 9 more women and 4 men.
The women who died could have been anyone. They could have been your friends, your mothers, your sisters, your lovers, your daughters, your neighbors, your students, your teachers, maybe even you.
They were killed because they were women.
Remember those who died in the Montreal Massacre:
Genevieve Bergeron, 21, was a 2nd year scholarship student in civil engineering.
Helene Colgan, 23, was in her final year of mechanical engineering and planned to take her master's degree.
Nathalie Croteau, 23, was in her final year of mechanical engineering.
Barbara Daigneault, 22, was in her final year of mechanical engineering and held a teaching assistantship.
Anne-Marie Edward, 21, was a first year student in chemical engineering.
Maud Haviernick, 29, was a 2nd year student in engineering materials, and a graduate in environmental design.
Barbara Maria Klucznik, 31, was a 2nd year engineering student specializing in engineering materials.
Maryse Laganiere, 25, worked in the budget department of the Polytechnique.
Maryse Leclair, 23, was a 4th year student in engineering materials.
Anne-Marie Lemay, 27, was a 4th year student in mechanical engineering.
Sonia Pelletier, 28, was to graduate the next day in mechanical engineering. She was awarded a degree posthumously.
Michele Richard, 21, was a 2nd year student in engineering materials.
Annie St-Arneault, 23, was a mechanical engineering student.
Annie Turcotte, 21, was a first year student in engineering materials.
Please honour the white ribbon as a symbol of the fight against violence against women.
Gosh it's a difficult time of year, when the desire to frolic outdoors in the late fall/early winter chill is tempered by the mountains of papers to grade, endless meetings to be held, and the lurking danger of syllabi for next semester. It's the time of year, when you have every intention of taking dog and kid for a walk after work, but that by the time you reach daycare, it is pitch black, and even though you haven't gotten there any later than you did a few months ago, you feel terrible about leaving your kid in the care of strangers so late into the night.
Minnow and I have been trying to find ways to counter these daylight confines by squeezing in fun adventures on weekends (trips to living history farms, nature centers, and local playgrounds) and by using our long winter evenings to read about the adventures and misadventures of other outdoor enthusiasts. With that as an intro, I present the current favorite book in the Science household, Stan and Jan Berenstain's The Bear Scouts.
(Isn't it amazing how Minnow is picking up on the rhyming and able to supply her own words to end some of the lines of text? In another take she did far more of it than displayed here.)
After we're done reading about the Bear Scouts' adventures, we can retreat to the cozy four-season tent...
pitched inside my home office. Do you think my students will believe me if I tell them their papers aren't graded because I've been camping every night this week? (As I write this, Princess Pup has made herself comfortable in the tent, as she patiently waits for me to finish and play with her.)
To all the students and faculty out there, good luck with the end of the semester crazies and may you find time to escape to nature when it is all over.
I did a not-so-stellar job of meeting my not-so-stellar goals for writing and research in November, but I did get some stuff done.
Done! Accepted!!!!!Finish revisions on the paper-that-won't-die (goal: November 13)
Done! Internal release time application (due November 18)
Read some, but not nearly enough. Read around proposed grad student topics enough to ensure we're not reinventing the wheel/pursuing proven dead ends (amorphous, I know)
Made progress, not enough to strike-through. Finish GIS work left-over from 2008 AGU poster.
Done! Write the letters of recommendation that have piled up because of graduate fellowship season.</li>
And, I did get some reflective clarity on what my research (and consequent writing) goals are for next semester.
Get 4 grads to the proposal defense stage, get one grad to thesis writing stage, get one grad's first paper out
Do a good job writing my first PI NSF proposal and submit in June
Write my side-project paper (or at least finish the analyses for realz)
Continuing laying groundwork towards a collabortive proposal pushing edges of PhD work
Women-in-geo paper and/or diversity grant coalition forming
More than an ambitious list given my teaching load and home-life responsibilities, but, hey it's good to have ambitious goals, right? And having them as an ordered list should help me cross some of them out, rather than having all of them turn out to be half-finished in May.
This week we are reading Judith Viorst's Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. This video was produced with a dedication to Kate, who explained to me why kids like this book so much even before they understand everything that's happening in it. She wisely told me that it's because kids rarely get to hear a story about a kid getting really mad, expressing their feelings, and without a neat fairy-tale or moralistic ending. Alexander just has a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day, and he's not afraid to tell us about it.
I'd also like to dedicate this post to all of my friends who've had terrible, horrible no good, very bad days in the past few weeks.
To A, who made a hard, but right decision,
To A, who had hir Thanksgiving plans turned topsy-turvy,
To B, who needs hir advisor just to help hir for once for crying-out-loud,
To C, who just needs some stinkin' data,
To C, who is facing yet another round of surgery and recovery,
To J, who needs in-laws that appreciate hir wonderful cookery,
To K, who put hirself in a tight spot by fighting for the thing zie knew was right,
To K, who is trying to figure out how to help a friend, while taking care of hirself,
To L, who fears for hir job and hir career,
To M and S, who were too sick to enjoy the day of feasting
To P, who is facing so much loss right now,
To S, who deserves more thanks for the wonderful job zie does caring for hir family, and
To everyone who's family dinner was less than idyllic yesterday.
Hopefully by talking about our big and small troubles, supporting each other through them, and offering the respite of compassionate friendship, we can help make things a little bit easier and kinder for everyone. As for Minnow and I, we're having very good days, thanks in no small part to knowing we have a network of supportive friends and family. Thanks to all of you for being part of that.
I am not in charge of SciWo's Storytime. Sure, it might look like I'm the one reading the books and operating the video camera, but Minnow exerts the ultimate executive authority as editor-in-chief. Some weeks no videos whatsoever are allowed to be made, some weeks she's content to let me pick the book, and some weeks she is quite happy to make a whole string of videos, so long as she chooses the content.
With that proviso, Minnow presents this week's edition of SciWo's Storytime featuring the book Little Squire the Fire Engine by Catherine Kenworthy and illustrated by Nina Barbaresi.
Anyways, I was in the process of contemplating Minnow's enthusiasm for fire truck books and wondering how I was going to get her to see a real-life fire truck when one came to us. Literally. Here's a photo of a fire truck parked at our house a few days after this video was made. No one had a fire, but an elderly neighbor fell and hurt himself and the firefighters/first responders were dispatched to help him up and to the hospital.
Minnow was very impressed, and also very relieved that the fire truck did not sound its siren on our tiny quiet street. When she was 1, the firefighters had come to her daycare for a demo and had sounded the siren for the kids. Minnow still talks about how scared she was.
We've got a wonderful book about pillbugs that I really want to make a video about, and we're still trying to track down some of the other great books requested by our DonorsChoose friends, so check back next week for another edition of SciWo's (and Minnow's) Storytime.
Alice Pawley is an assistant professor of 
SciWo is an assistant professor of geosciences. She blogs about the intersection of science and real life - primarily based on her first-hand experiences. Her older posts can be found 
When I began to blog almost 5 years ago, I wanted to share stories of my graduate school experience with other women scientists in the hopes that we could form a virtual support network for each other. Back then it took me weeks to find even one other woman doing the same thing with a blog. Today, there is a whole community of women blogging about their experiences in science and engineering, from undergraduates to tenured faculty. A google search of "woman science blog" or similar will point to some prominent blogs and from there a newbie blog reader can use blog rolls and comment threads to find the panopoly of bloggers having more intimate conversations about life, work, and the precarious juggling act of "having it all." 
You might have guessed this was coming. My blogging frequency has dropped off dramatically this year, particularly this semester. I keep writing "yep, I haven't died yet - I'll tell you all about what I'm doing sometime, really" posts, and not ever following up.
